Rescuing 'Reason' from the 'Rationalists': Reading Vico,Marx and Weber as Reflective Institutionalists

Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 17. No. 2, Summer 1988 ).

James Der Derian . 'Introducing Philosophical Traditions in International Relations', Millenium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 1988). p. 192. See also Yosef Lapid. 'The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era', International Studies Quarterly, (Vol. 33, 1989), pp. 235-54 and responses.

H.R. Alker. Jr. and T.J. Biersteker. 'The Dialectics of World Order: Notes for a Future Archaeologist of International Savoir Faire. International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 28. 1984). pp. 121-42.

Practitioners of an 'historicist' line of research explicitly recognise that human expressions, including theirs and others' scientific theories, are historically hounded in many, frequently non-obvious ways, some - but not all of which - they may be able correctively to take account of. This commitment to historical and contextual falliblism. so well grounded in the historical sociology of the natural and social sciences, should not overly trouble post-Cold War Popperians.

Robert O. Keohane , 'International Institutions: Two Approaches ', International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 32. No. 4. December 1988). pp. 379-96. Keohane adopts Simon's instrumentalist notion of 'rational behavior' - 'behavior that is appropriate to specified goals in the context of a given situation' - and characterises economic 'rationalists' in terms of their 'substantive or objective rationality' - a view of 'behavior that can be adjudged objectively to he optimally adapted to the situation'. The artificial intelligence modelling studies I have participated in or encouraged obviously follow Simon's own, preferred 'procedural' account of 'the limitations of knowledge and computing power' of the rational choosing organism. But they go beyond, and through, such linguistic and cognitive constraints to explore dialectical, generative, imaginative, capacities of reasoning and arguing as well. As Rescher puts it: 'Reasoning can proceed not just inferentially' (ampliatively from axioms) 'but also dialetically' (reductively, argumentatively) from a complex, contradictory set of plausible initial positions. 'There are two different sorts of cognitive disciplines - the hard (e.g., physics), for which the mathematical (ampliative model [of reasoning]) is doubtless optimal, and the soft (e.g., history), for which the dialectical/reductive model is optimal.' See H.A. Simon , 'Human Nature in Politics', American Political Science Review (Vol. 79, 1989), p. 294; N. Rescher , 'Rationality and Consistency', Chapter 3 of his Forbidden Knowledge (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987), p. 40; and H.R. Alker. Jr.. G. Duffy , R. Hurwitz , J.C. Mallery , 'Text Modeling for International Politics', in V. Hudson (ed.), Artificial Intelligence and International Politics , forthcoming.

Vico's most important book, originally published in 1725; and revised in several editions thereafter, is available in English. See Giambattista Vico , The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Revised Translation of the Third Edition, 1744 (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1968).

Isaiah Berlin , Vico & Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas ( New York: Random House. Vintage Books. 1977). Note especially Berlin's summary on pages xvi-xix of the introduction.

Ibid, p. 11.

Ibid, p. 12.

Ibid, p. 15.

Ibid, p. 16.

Vico , op. cit, in note 6, cited in Berlin , op. cit., in note 7, p. 126.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, pp. xvi ff. This is only the first of a number of citations or paraphrases wherein gendered language is likely to insult the sensitivities of the contemporary reader. With apologies, due to my attempt to render accurately the views and language of the older scholars whom I am discussing, I shall continue this practice where it is deemed inconvenient not to do so.

Vico. op. cit., in note 6. cited in Berlin , op. cit, in note 7. p. 17.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, p. 140.

Ibid, pp. xvi ff.

See Muhsin Mahdi . Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of the Science of Culture ( Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press. 1964), which describes (on p. 5) Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah as 'a new science of culture'. Its first edition seems to have been a manuscript copy given to the royal library at Tunis in or before the year 1382 of the Christian calendar ( Mahdi , op. cit, in note 17, p. 52). I infer that Vico was unaware of Ihn Khaldun's work from the absence of his mention of him in either Vico , op. cit, in note 6, Berlin, op. cit , in note 7 or Mahdi , op. cit, in note 17.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, pp. xvii and 138.

Ibid, p. 117; see also p, xvii.

A philosophically sophisticated account and selection is given in F.R. Dallmayr and T.A. McCarthy (eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1977). Since I shall be stressing Habermas' reading of Weber below, it is also worth citing Anthony Gidden's perspicuous introduction to Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989); and Randall Collins. Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). as relevant alternatives.

Vico , op. cit, in note 6. paraphrased in Berlin , op. cit., in note 7, pp. 102 and 107 ff.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, p. 82.

Vico. op. cit., in note 6, quoted in Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, p. 48.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, pp. 136-38.

Vico , op. cit, in note 6, quoted in Berlin , op. cit., in note 7. p. 83.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, pp. 36.81 and 113.

Ibid, pp. 16 and 100.

Ibid, p. 36.

Ibid, p. 34.

Ibid, pp. 40 ff.

Ibid, pp. 34 ff.

Ibid, p. 41.

Ibid, p. 42.

See such works as Alfred Schmidt. History and Structure: An Essay on Hegelian-Marxist and Structuralist Theories of History (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 1981); J. Habermas. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge. MA : MIT Press, 1987); Anthony Holiday , Moral Powers: Normative Necessity in Language and History ( London: Routledge, 1988); G.H. Mead. Mind. Self & Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago. IL: University of Chicago Press . 1934): and James V. Wertsch , Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press. 1985).

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, p. 51.

Ibid, pp. 43 ff.

Vico. op. cit., in note 6, cited in Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, p. 48.

Berlin. op. cit., in note 7, p. 53.

Vico. op. cit., in note 6. quoted in Berlin, op. cit, in note 7, p. 53.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7. pp. 54 ff.

Ibid, p. 48.

Vico. op. cit., in note 6. quoted in Berlin. op. cit, in note 7, p. 61.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7, p. 61,

Ibid, p. 61.

Vico , op. cit, in note 6. quoted in Berlin , op. cit., in note 7, p. 63.

Berlin , op. cit, in note 7. p. 63.

Ibid, p. 62.

Ibid, pp. 62 ff.

In this suhsection, I shall frequency cite Hayden White , Metahistory: The Historical Imagination Nineteenth-Century Europe ( Baltimore. MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973). who briefly discusses Vico in note 12, p. 32. Pages 29-42 of White's introduction, 'The Poetics of History', are the basis for Table I. His historiographical review, going back to the Renaissance, is most concentrated in Chapter 1, 'The Historical Imagination between Metaphor and Irony', pp. 45-80. Table 2 derives from White's Chapter 8, ' Marx: The Philosophical Defense of History in the Metonymical Mode', pp. 281-330.

Ibid, p. 32.

Ibid, p. 34: see also Table 1. White capitalises the figurative tropes to signify this defined meaning.

Ibid, p. 34: see also the summary in Table I.

Ibid, p. 34.

Ibid, pp. 34 ff.

In emphasising the reflective, developmental reading of Vico's thoughts on rhetoric and poetics, I should also note the significant resonance that White finds with Vico on this related theme, the role of poetic figures in prefiguring and constituting "realistic' or' scientitic' descriptions and explanations.

White , op. cit, in note 49. p. 36.

Ibid, p. 37.

Ibid, p. 37.

Ibid, p. 281.

Ibid, p. 285.

Ibid, p. 287. This filled-in quotation is meant to suggest Marx's communist ideal, when a new and more perfect history or historicity is supposed to begin. More generally, when historicist understanding is self-reflective, historicity imperfectly results.

Ibid, p. 2.

See especially pp.51-53 and the terminology quoted on p. 59 from Eduard fueter's Geschichte der neuen Historiographie ( Munich: Oldenbourg. 1911). Thus. the 'rellectivist' traditional critical historiography has been recognised as such, at least since Weber's lime.

Three very different books emphasising similar themes are: L.P. Wessell, Jr.. Karl Marx , Romantic Ironv and the Proletariat: The Mythopoetic Origins of Marxism (London: Louisiana State University Press. 1979); Bruce Mazlish , The Meaning of Karl Marx (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); and Ernst Bloch , The Principle of Hope, 3 Vols., First American edition (Cambridge. MA : MIT Press. 1986). See also H.R. Alker, Jr.. 'Fairy Tales. Tragedies and World Histories '. Behaviormetrik (No. 17. 1987). pp. 1-28.

For the sake of brevity. 1 only note here the large section of White's chapter where he retells Marx's account of France's mid-nineteenth century political-economic history in these terms. The generative structure of his mature, concrete histories — The Eighteenth Brumaire and The Civil War in France - are shown to reflect the same figurative definitions and dramatic emplotments as his early writings in The Communist Manifesto and his most abstract economic analysis in Capital. enriched of course with his tragicomic. farcical account of Napoleon II.

The Weber selections and commentary in the Gerth and Mills reader. From Max Weber (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1946). McCarthy and Dallmayr's Understanding and Social Inquiry (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1977). and E.A. Shils and H.A. Finch (eds.). The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1949) are all useful entry points to Weber's epistemological, methodological and theoretical concerns.

Weber , op. cit, in note 20, pp. 181ff. (Copyright 1989 by Unwin Hyman, Inc. This quotation and the one in note 68 have been reprinted by permission.)

Ibid, p. 182.

A provocative reading of Weber, emphasising the similarities among his last, multidimensional treatment of capitalism, his General Economic History ( London: Transaction Books. 1981) and Immanuel Wallerstein's multi-volume treatise on The Modem World-System , 3 Volumes (New York: Academic Press, 1974, 1980, 1989 ), is Randall Collins ' Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Weber's chapter on 'Citizenship' ends with the Wallersteinian thesis: 'as long as the national state does not give place to a world empire, capitalism also will endure' (p. 337). The closest Weber comes to the ironic interpretation of money emphasised above is his 'Speculation reaches its full significance only from the moment when property takes the form of negotiable paper' (p. 278 of the General Economic History), a sentence with which he dramatically concludes a chapter entitled 'The Meaning and Presuppositions of Modem Capitalism'.

I have found the lectures at Harvard University, by Hillary Putnam and Daniel Bell in the fall of 1989, helpful on this work. See also Fred R. Dallmayr , Chapter 3, ' Life world and Communicative Action, Habermas', in Critical Encounters: Between Philosophy and Politics (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1989).

J. Habermas , The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (Reason and the Rutionalization of Society), translated by Thomas McCarthy (Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 1984), Chapter 11, p. 167; J. Habermas , The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2 (Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason), translated by Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987). Chapter VI, pp. 119-152. Weber's historicist self understanding is emphasised in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Third Edition, (Tübingen, 1968), especially pp. 184 and 213. See also Weber's book, Roscher and Knies : The Logical Problems of Historical Economics , edited and translated by Guy Oakes , (New York: Free Press, 1985). These references I owe to Guy Oakes and MIT graduate student Robert Hancke.

J. Habermas , The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2 (Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason), translated by Thomas McCarthy ( Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), Chapter VI, p. 138.

Ibid, Chapter VIII, pp. 303ff.

See the chapter on 'Technology and Science as Ideology' in J. Habermas , Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest. Science and Politics (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1970). The original was published in Germany in an eventful year for European student politics, 1968. His distinction between 'symbolic interaction' within an institutional framework and purposive-rational actions of an instrumental or strategic (involving others, treated instrumentally) sort is one such predecessor.

J. Habermas , The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (Reason and the Rationalization of Society), translated by Thomas McCarthy (Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 1984), Chapter 1, p. 9.

Habermas , op. cit, in note 72, Chapter V, p. 12.

Ibid, Chapter VII, pp. 12ff.

Habermas , op. cit, in note 75. Chapter I, p. 13.

Mead, quoted in Habennas , op. cit., in note 72, Chapter V. p. 15.

Habermas , op. cit, in note 75. Chapter I, p. 15.

Ibid, Chapter 1, p. 15.

Ibid, Chapter 1, p. 20.

Ibid, Chapter I, pp. 22ff.

Habermas , op. cit, in note 72, Chapter VI, p. 147.

Ibid, Chapter VI, p. 146.

Ibid, Chapter VI, pp. 142ff.

Ibid, Chapter VI, pp. 141. Politically speaking. Habermas endorses democratically structured deliberative rationality in an enlarged public sphere. For a remarkably similar conception, see Joshua Cohen , 'An Epistemic Conception of Democracy'. Ethics (Vol. 97, October 1986). pp. 26-38; Joshua Cohen , 'Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy', in A. Hamblin and P. Petit (eds.). The Gond Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989): and Joshua Cohen , 'The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy', Social Philosophy and Policy (Vol. 6, No. 2, Spring 1989), pp. 25-50.

Habermas ,. op. cit, in note 72, Chapter VII, p. 328.

Ibid, Chapter VII, pp. 332ff.

J. Habermas , Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston, MA : Beacon Press, 1979), p. 115. In his final work, Weber remains critical of capitalist evolution: in a chapter of the General Economic History entitled, 'The External Facts in the Evolution of Capitalism', he makes the Marxian claim: 'The conduct of war by the state becomes a business operation of the possessing classes.'

Ibid, p. 115.

The reference. of course, is to M. Masterman , 'The Nature of a Paradigm'. in I. Lakatos and R. Musgrave (eds.). Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1970). Reread carefully. Masterman's account is also a sensitive synthetic respecification of Thomas Kuhn's historical analysis. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL : Chicago University Press. 1962 ), a respecification which Kuhn largely adopts in the Postscript to the 1970 edition of his book. with his respecification of 'paradigms' as 'exemplars' and multifaceted 'disciplinary matrices'.

Kcohane , op. cit, in note 5. These mauers will be discussed more fully in H.R. Alker. Jr. and Richard K. Ashley , After Neorealism: Anarchic Institutions of World Politics, forthcoming.

1 have in mind many of the post-struouratist or post-modern analyses given at professional meetings before Keohane's address, including those published in the Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Special Issue, mentioned in note 1. See also the papers, some by the same authors. ably grouped in J. Der Derian and M. Shapiro (eds.). International/Intertextual Relations: Boundaries of Knowledge and Practice in World Politics (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. 1989), and James Der Derian's On Diplomacy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1987).

Published hy the Femand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies. Historical Systems. and Civilizations. State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY.

R. Jervis. 'Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma'. World Politics (Vol. 30. No. 2. January 1979), pp. 167-216. Compare Jervis' and Waltz's treatment of Rousseau with the discussion of Joshua Cohen's discussion in note 87 and Michael C. Williams ' 'Rousseau, Realism and Realpolitik', Millennium: Journal of International Studies (Vol. 18, No. 2. Summer 1989), pp. 185-203. Williams argues, against Waltz, that 'the stag-hunt represents a primitive form of rationality which Rousseau acknowledges, but which he argues is disastrously deficient and represents not the eternal form of reason dictated by the logic of the situation. but rather an immature and incomplete understanding requiring supercession' (p. 194).