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Pigs can't fly, or can they? Ontology, scientific realism and the metaphysics of presence in international relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2009

TORSTEN MICHEL
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Abstract

In recent debates in IR theory a specific trend has evolved which advocates a renewed focus on matters of ontology as a way to overcome or at least to reconceptualise the divides within the field of IR that we encounter especially after the considerable widening of scope after the end of the Cold War. Responding to these claims the article sets out to provide a closer look at the different arguments presented for a renewed concern with ontology and its ramifications. With this task in mind, three particular complexes will be addressed. First, we have to identify the central claims of these new ontological approaches and assess them in respect to coherence and analytic rigour. Secondly, then, we will proceed with identifying the underlying reasons for their shortcomings which as will be shown lie with the misguided concept of ontology. If this conception is properly reworked, can indeed bring new light into otherwise protracted or even deadlocked debates.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 2009, pp. 397 - 419
Copyright
Copyright © © British International Studies Association 2009

Introduction

Ontology is back. In recent debates in IR theory a specific trend has evolved which advocates a renewed focus on matters of ontology as a way to overcome or at least to reconceptualise the divides within the field of IR that we encounter especially after the considerable widening of scope after the end of the Cold War.

‘Recent years have seen a marked resurgence of debates about the philosophical foundations of empirical inquiry throughout the social sciences … the conceptual sophistication of the study of politics has certainly been on the increase’.Footnote 1 One of the most sustained and prevalent discussions in this new-found sophistication relates to the status of the entities we study. As Jackson rightly pointed out, the concern with questions regarding the nature and status of the entities towards which our research efforts are directed is closely tied to the demise of the Enlightenment ideal to achieve a presuppositionless and objective science.Footnote 2 If we, however, abandon the Enlightenment ideal of objectivity and its concomitant focus on epistemological questions, ‘then we have to fundamentally rethink the ways in which we conduct and evaluate empirical research in IR’.Footnote 3 In light of the challenges expounded against the ideal of presuppositionless science we encounter many different approaches engaging this problem. Fundamental to all of them are the central assumptions about the things and entities we are trying to understand and their relation to human existence. Following this renewed interest in the status and nature of beings ‘we should bring ontological considerations to the forefront of our reflections about the status of the knowledge that we produce in our research’.Footnote 4

In this sense proponents of this ‘ontological turn’ emphasise the importance of reconceptualising exactly these entities in order to detect and eliminate epistemological and methodological problems that arise out of a flawed ontology.Footnote 5 On the forefront of this movement, and the main concern in this article, is a group of scholars who label themselves ‘critical realists’ and draw their insights from specific parts of the philosophy of science, especially the work of Roy Bhaskar. Much attention has been drawn to this group of scholars as can be seen in a variety of publications in main IR journals as well as the appearance of book-length studies.Footnote 6

Responding to these claims the following article sets out to provide a closer look at the different arguments presented for a renewed concern with ontology and its ramifications. The main focus hereby lies neither with an assessment of Bhaskar's work as such nor with the purely philosophical debates it engendered. Likewise we are not intending to delineate whether and to what degree the position labelled ‘scientific realism’ which we take from the work of a number of scholars is clear-cut and coherent approach in itself.Footnote 7 Instead our enquiry centres on the implications of the interpretations of this thought for contemporary IR theory, thereby showing that the scientific realist conception of ontology is flawed but can be remedied by a turn towards post-Husserlian phenomenology.

With this task in sight, three particular complexes have to be addressed. First, we have to identify the central claims of these new ontological approaches and assess them in respect to coherence and analytic rigour. As will be argued, the different contributions to this ongoing debate so far are not satisfactory and merely achieve the shift from an epistemological foundationalism to an ontological one. Such a move, however, only shifts the problems that haunt current debates in IR theory rather than solving any of them. Secondly, then, we will proceed in identifying the underlying reasons for this failure which as will be shown lie with the misguided concept of ontology employed in these accounts. Finally, the article will argue that a renewed concern with ontological questions can indeed bring new light into otherwise protracted or even deadlocked debates. It will show how the ‘metaphysics of presence’ which relies upon a post-Cartesian notion of subjectivity and which is prevalent in current debates can be challenged by drawing on post-Husserlian phenomenology, particularly the early thought of Martin Heidegger. It will sketch out the main elements of such an ontology, particularly the central claim that human existence is characterised by facticity, that is, the constant immersion or ‘whiling’ of ‘Dasein in its being-there for a while at the particular time’.Footnote 8 As will be shown, we can already see scholars engaged in the practice of applying insights related to such a conception of Dasein and ontology.Footnote 9 What seems to be missing at the moment is a thorough and rigorous conceptualisation of what such an ontology would entail and which commitments it would demand.

Scientific realism and the road to a new ontology for IR

When looking at the literature in IR theory produced over the last two decades or so it is indeed hard to find any sustained treatment of ontological matters independent of a larger epistemological or methodological concern. Certainly, any theoretical study about the dynamics and processes of international politics includes ontological assumptions and arguments but the thrust of the theoretical debates (what has been subsumed under the label of the ‘third debate’ between positivism and post-positivism) still lies overwhelmingly with epistemological and methodological questions. It seems that the underlying bias assumes that before we can engage into any discussion or argument about international politics and its constituent entities we have to delineate the epistemological space in which we operate.

The main aim, apart from the specific problems and issues within the field of IR that are addressed by a group of confessed scientific realists is therefore to challenge this perceived epistemological bias and transgress the limiting boundaries that ex ante concerns regarding epistemology produce. As Colin Wight, one of the main proponents of this ontologically oriented group of scholars argues: ‘The attempt to specify epistemological and/or methodological criteria for science in advance of ontological commitments is an act of unnecessary closure’.Footnote 10 Instead he suggests we should look at what entities we can find and identify in the international sphere and then devise epistemological and methodological tools to study them and gain knowledge about them. A primary focus on epistemology as a starting point for enquiries into the social and political realm is misguided since ‘[t]here are simply no epistemological or methodological divides to accept, defend or bridge’.Footnote 11

Instead, the study of IR is in fact not about epistemology but about different ontologies. ‘Politics is the terrain of competing ontologies. Politics is about competing visions of how the world is and how it should be. […] If there were no ontological differences there would be no politics’.Footnote 12 For Wight therefore the task is clear: Scholars in IR have to rethink their competing ontologies in order to understand the conflicts and disagreements within the discipline. ‘As such, understanding the ontological differences that lie at the heart of competing visions of the world should be the aim of any properly conceived critical discipline of IR’.Footnote 13

What Wight has in mind becomes clear early on in the introduction to his book Agents, Structures and International Relations when he launches yet another ill-fated criticism against Kratochwil's positionFootnote 14 on matters of ontology and epistemology (or at least against the position he perceives to be Kratochwil's). Wight says: ‘The epistemological way of approaching the issue is deeply ingrained and it is not only positivists who adhere to it. Friedrich Kratochwil … argues that the important answers to fundamental questions concerning human action are located in our concept of knowledge’.Footnote 15 He clearly claims that Kratochwil takes epistemology to be prior to ontology and the two are basically causally linked in the way that ‘world-images are dependent upon, and derived from, corresponding concepts of knowledge’.Footnote 16 He goes on to claim that this ‘assumption is endemic within the discipline. The assumption is also wrong. What we think we know exists has no bearing on what actually exists’.Footnote 17

Two elements are important here. First, it seems worthwhile to have a quick look at what Kratochwil actually says and then assess whether Wight portrayed the position correctly. Secondly, we must have a closer look at Wight's proposed predominance of ontological issues over epistemological ones. If we refer to Kratochwil's book Rules, norms, and decisions, we find on page 21 (the page Wight cites to support his claims)Footnote 18 the following paragraph:

How do we understand human action, and what roles do norms play in this process? The answers to these questions obviously depend upon our concept of knowledge, and this concept in turn, is constituted by our ideas about the world we live in and which we experience as reality. One way of approaching this problem is, therefore, to reconstruct images of possible worlds and show their epistemological presuppositions. Such a procedure might enable us to see in turn the limitations of certain concepts of knowledge, based on certain world-images.Footnote 19

Wight, as we have seen, takes this statement as an example of how epistemology is taken to be prior to ontology in the current debates in IR. A closer reading, however, reveals that Wight's interpretation is problematic. First, Kratochwil says that the answers to the questions he raises lie with the concept of knowledge. This concept of knowledge, however, ‘in turn, is constituted by our ideas about the world we live in and which we experience as reality’.Footnote 20 Epistemology is therefore not the basic ground out of which ontology arises but it is itself depended on our ideas how the world is – obviously an ontological argument. But Kratochwil goes further by saying that one way to approach the question he raises lies in the reconstruction of world images to uncover their epistemological presuppositions and then ‘in turn reflect back onto the limitations of these epistemological assumptions that arise out of these world-images’.Footnote 21 What Kratochwil is in fact saying here is that ontology (world-images) and epistemology (systems of knowledge) are inextricably intertwined. The world we experience is based upon certain epistemological assumptions that in turn are limited by the world-image we have – ways of being and ways of knowing are inextricably intertwined. Kratochwil argues in fact for a dialectical relationship between epistemology and ontology and not, as Wight stipulates, for a primacy of epistemology over ontology.Footnote 22

This point is important because if Kratochwil is right, any claim to a primacy of either epistemology or ontology is misguided and the critical realist position is subsequently as problematic as purely epistemologically based approaches. In this case, ‘the mistake lies in having conceived of the problem of ontology and epistemology in terms of separable spheres, without realising the extent of their interdependence’.Footnote 23 In order to counter this argument, critical realists would have to show that ontological statements can and do provide the basis for any enquiry into international politics and everything else is derivative of them. And indeed Wight, for instance, makes this claim when he maintains that ‘[a]ll theories presuppose a basic ontology from which all other considerations follow. No ontology, no theory’.Footnote 24

Scientific realism and the primacy of ‘intransitive objects’

How is such an ontological primacy possible? The way in which critical realists conceptualise their ontological concerns is via reference to a specific strand within the philosophy of science – scientific realism, or their version thereof. In short, scientific realism in this sense stipulates the existence of mind-independent entities – observables and unobservables alike – that provide the ontological basis which constrains and enables human action.Footnote 25 These entities are ontological givens and do not depend in any way upon human modes of perception or representation.Footnote 26 A commitment to such a view in the field of IR is not new to critical realist thinking. We can find a very similar commitment to scientific realism and its consequences in Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics, another volume that aims at an ontological reiteration of IR.Footnote 27

The entities scientific realism posits as independently given build the backbone of their ontological commitments. Since these objects exist in the world apart from human concepts and concerns they are labelled ‘intransitive objects’Footnote 28 and they build so to say the ontological basis for any further enquiry into the social world. Furthermore, critical realists argue that these intransitive objects are not only to be found in the region of the natural sciences but can equally be found within the social realm.Footnote 29

Epistemologies and methodologies are then imposed structures, humanly devised to grasp these intransitive objects. Admittedly, critical realists are not committed to an epistemological foundationalism that delimits the way in which things can be known.Footnote 30 Rather, they embrace an epistemological plurality (although not necessarily a pluralism as they are still committed to the modern notion of science), which maintains that since they are many different entities ‘out there’ we must accept many different ways to know them. This commitment to different epistemologies does, however, not entail a relativist stand towards competing conceptualisations. Critical realists still maintain the general possibility to judge which approach is ‘better’ and therefore defend the notion of judgemental rationalism. Overall, therefore, the position presented here consists of three complimentary stipulations:

Understood as the attempt to provide depth explanations, however, a series of metaphysical commitments is still implied. Broadly put, I consider these to be: ontological realism (that there is a reality independent of the mind[s] that would wish to come to know it); epistemological relativism (that all beliefs are socially produced); and judgmental rationalism (that despite epistemological relativism, it is still possible, in principle, to choose between competing theories).Footnote 31

In the remainder of this section we will show how each of these commitments is compromised and therefore undermines the overall account with which scientific realists try to rethink and reconceptualise the role and nature of ontology for the social sciences and for IR in particular.

Ontological realism

In respect to the first point scientific realists argue for a mind-independent reality that exists before and beyond the human agents that are engaged in delineating certain features of this environment. ‘A commitment to depth realism presupposes that there are things, entities, structures and/or mechanisms that operate and exist independently of our ability to know or manipulate them’.Footnote 32 In order to substantiate this claim which in due course should open the path towards a depth ontology or a depth realism Wight introduces the abovementioned category of ‘intransitive’ objects. ‘Science is possible, then, because the world consists of “intransitive” objects which form the focus of scientific discourses; with the aim of science in particular being the production of knowledge of mechanisms that in certain combinations produce the phenomena that are actually manifest in experience/appearance’.Footnote 33 In Wight's view these ‘intransitive’ objects exist and change without human interference and build the foundation out of which the different sciences and varying epistemologies evolve. ‘On a realist ontology … being is independent of human experience and/or expressions of it’.Footnote 34

The existence of these objects is not confined to either material or natural phenomena. Wight sees no problem in identifying ideal and social structures or entities as ‘intransitive’ objects that exhibit a mind-independent momentum of existence and change that only subsequently are approached with different epistemological tools. He maintains, for instance, that:

[m]odern capitalist societies, for example, have not always existed and there may well come a time when they cease to exist, and in this sense Bashkar is right to claim that they are not time-space invariant. Nevertheless, in another sense, it would be correct to formulate, in a conditional manner, a law of the form: ‘whenever such capitalist societies emerge, with the relevant structures, then these tendencies will operate’. Laws formulated in this conditional manner are commonplace within the natural sciences. And there is no reason why the social sciences should not also construct such laws.Footnote 35

Therefore, Wight maintains that we should ‘not rule out the idea of intransitive objects in terms of social inquiry. The events of 11 September 2001, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Holocaust were as they were, independent of anything we might write of them today, just as the men in army battle dress are engaged in a particular activity, and one, it needs stressing, can be misdescribed by a putative observer’.Footnote 36

Both assumptions, the existence of intransitive objects in the natural sciences as well as in the social sciences are, however, misleading if not outright wrong. We find an example of an ontological given in Wendt's statement ‘Pigs can't fly’ which he takes to be a perfect case in point that shows the existence of mind-independent ontological facts.

Dismissing the ‘postmodern’ proclivity towards a relational theory of reference which allows only reference to discourse and not to accurate and true facts he states: ‘The main problem with the relational theory of reference is that it cannot account for the resistance of the world to certain representations, and thus for representational failures or misinterpretations. Worldly resistance is most obvious in nature: whether our discourse says so or not, pigs can't fly’.Footnote 37 Wendt appeals hereby to certain facts that are simply materially given and do not depend on any human conceptualisation or discursive structure and therefore assume an independent causal moment. Pigs cannot fly because they are pigs – this has nothing to do with any human involvement, it is just a material fact. At first glance this argument seems watertight since any claim that pigs cannot fly because humans have decided it or that they could fly just because humans decided it is ridiculous. If we look closer, however, we can see that this argument is in fact not as secure as it seems. To restate the claim, material facts exist independent of the human agent and therefore constrain human action to a certain degree. The power of constraint does not come from any human conceptualisations or theory but lies in the nature of specific material entities in the mind-independent world – which means that pigs cannot fly because they are pigs.

Surprising as this may sound, this stipulation is simply not correct. It is right to say pigs cannot fly on earth but they can fly, as can humans, on the moon. Therefore we can find conditions under which pigs cannot fly and others under which they can. Now, at first this argument seems pedantic since human life at least at the moment is organised on earth and therefore it can hardly matter whether pigs can fly on the moon or any other planet. In fact, however, the appeal to conditions under which pigs can fly reveals the weakness in Wendt's argument. Remember, for his account of material conditions as causes to work, they must evolve out of the nature of the mind-independent object. But in the case of the pig they obviously do not. What prevents the pig from flying is not its own nature as pig but specific conditions on earth – gravity. Gravity, however, is only one way and in fact a human way to state why pigs cannot fly. The notion of gravity developed historically with the rise of the natural sciences. In a religiously guided discourse we would find the argument that God and not gravity decided whether pigs can fly or not, maybe even that God is constantly pushing the pig down preventing it thereby from flying.Footnote 38 Gravity as such and the concomitant belief in scientific enquiry can, however, not be understood independent from the human practices that constitute the natural sciences.

This insight is of tremendous importance. If human beings try to discover the reason why pigs cannot fly and they appeal to a divine entity that made this decision, certain enquiries into the nature of our environment and its manipulability will follow and others will not. The assumption ‘humans cannot fly because God decided they cannot’ and the assumption ‘humans cannot fly because gravity prevents them from doing so’ lead to completely different social realities. In the first there is no point to enquire any further into the reasons or causes why humans cannot fly, in the second, however, we stipulate that there are certain discoverable reasons and causes and once we have discovered them we are able to manipulate them – we can invent the plane to counter the gravitational forces that hold us down.

The meaning of both forms of explanations depends on legitimising processes in the society they are exercised in. In a secular society any appeal to divine intervention is labelled ‘superstitious’ and any appeal to scientific mechanical causes in a religious society is labelled ‘blasphemous’. It is obvious that the explanatory power emanates from socially accepted and agreed upon practices and not from the material objects themselves. Overall, we can see that even common sense facts such as ‘pigs cannot fly’ are in fact deeply interwoven and dependent on human practices and not vested in the nature of objects in a mind-independent world. We never have a neutral stand towards objects in our world but always encounter them with specific conceptions and categories in place; we always encounter them in a mode of involvement or engagement.Footnote 39 Meaning is always already socially established and relies upon certain categories that are not natural. Therefore, it seems fair to say, that although matter might exist beyond the human mind and has existed before the advent of the human species, we as humans have no possibility to encounter matter as matter independent of our concepts of the world and anything in it. Most importantly here, Wight as well as Wendt, to the detriment of their arguments, ignore the constitutive role of language (a point we will elaborate on later).

Secondly, Wight also maintains as we have seen the existence of ‘intransitive’ objects in the social realm.Footnote 40 It will suffice to consider one example in this respect, let us say the Iraq War in 2003. Wight, we assume, would argue that independent of how we interpret or evaluate this event later on, something happened at a specific point in time that subsequently qualifies as the object, intransitive object that is, for our studies. Again, Wight is correct in stating that ‘something’ happened there but this ‘something’ cannot be grasped as what it really is beyond the human sphere of meaning. Even a seemingly neutral statement such as, ‘In March 2003 the United States of America went to war with Iraq’ is full of value laden meanings that are socially dependent. For example, the terms ‘United States of America’ and ‘Iraq’ presuppose the socially constituted notion of statehood. Moreover, some in the US administration might say that America did not fight a war against Iraq but only against Saddam Hussein and his regime. Others might maintain that this whole event was actually not a war and we find certainly many different opinions on whether the ‘war’ has already ended or is still ongoing. Likewise, some people might say that the US attacked Iraq, others would say that they liberated it, others might say they intervened. Some might say it is a form of imperialism, others that it is neo-colonialism, others that it was self-defence and yet others that it could even be seen as a humanitarian intervention. The problem simply is that although we might be able to conceptually realise that something happened, what this something ‘is’ cannot be described outside human existence and meaning exactly because the only way we have to grasp these ‘intransitive’ objects is through language and language is never neutral (again, we will elaborate on this point below).

Therefore, we end up with asking what this ‘ontological realism’ is actually worth and whether it can help us in any way to grasp ‘reality’ outside human existence and use it as a neutral base onto which we plant further evaluations and epistemological concepts. To be sure, this is not a denial of a material reality outside the human mind nor is it an endorsement of a radical idealism. Rather, the whole endeavour can be seen as relying upon a wrong conception of ontology.

Epistemological relativism and judgmental rationalism

The second and third point Wight proposes in his model of scientific realism regards the epistemological relativism and concomitant judgemental rationalism that he endorses as key components of his approach. To begin with, Wight accepts the necessity of various ways of scientific enquiry to react to the variety of phenomena to be studied. ‘For scientific realists there can be no single ‘scientific method’. Understood as the attempt to provide depth explanations of phenomena, it must be the case that different phenomena will require different models of explanation’.Footnote 41 Furthermore, he argues in favour of historically situated forms of knowledge. He accepts that at different points in time the epistemological categories and methods change.

… since it is difficult to conceive of our minds being formed outside of the influence of specific societies, non-scientific knowledge is also historically specific. Different societies will instil different ideas and practices. Given the historically specific nature of knowledge, we have to accept the fact of epistemological relativism; namely, that all beliefs are socially produced, so that knowledge is transient, and neither truth value nor criteria of rationality exist outside of historical time.Footnote 42

So far, we would have no problem agreeing with Wight's stipulations. He maintains beyond this epistemological stand, however, further assumptions that are highly problematic. First is the stipulation that there are intransitive objects that exist beyond and outside the epistemological and social realms. Why this is problematic we have shown above. Secondly is Wight's assumption that albeit the historically conditioned nature of our knowledge we are able to rationally judge which theory or methodology that arises out of the epistemic cultures is ‘better’. He says:

Scientific realism is epistemologically relativist, that is, relativist about the transitive object, not ontologically relativist. And because it is knowledge of an intransitive object, some knowledge claims may be better than others. Hence there is at least the possibility of judgmental rationalism. The acceptance of epistemological relativism, then, does not require us to embrace judgemental relativism. In fact, there may be, and often are, good grounds for preferring one theory or account of some aspect of the world to another.Footnote 43

These decisions, however, that should bring us to judgements about the value of differing theories about an intransitive object or its parts rely upon a specific epistemological framework in which they are exercised. To underline his point, Wight insists that what he identifies as the usually used ‘incommensurability thesis’ is actually wrong and cross-paradigm discussions and communication is possible. ‘…, there is no reason to assume that it is impossible to communicate between different theoretical or conceptual schemes or that a scientist cannot know the same object under two or more different descriptions. To show the difference between Newtonian and Einsteinian dynamics and that the latter is an advance of the former the scientist must be capable of doing so’.Footnote 44

At first glance, again, Wight is of course correct to say first that different theories can be known and described by the same scientist and secondly that an evaluation which one is better is possible as for example is the case when comparing Newtonian and Einsteinian dynamics. There are, however, qualifications in respect to the latter claim, the claim that judgemental rationalism is possible, namely that it is only possible within an accepted frame of reference. In case of the comparison between Einstein and Newton it is obvious that both accepted a specific view of the world governed by scientific laws generally discoverable by human agents. The process of discovery and the subsequent process of proving a theory is presupposed. In cases, however, in which two completely different frames of reference meet Wight's argument breaks down. If we talk about ‘the world’ and why it is rotating, for instance, we can indeed develop different ‘scientific’ theories and given the conditions under which theories are accepted (which of course are socially produced) we can say which is better. If we, however, address the question from a scientific and a religious point of view Wight's judgmental rationalism is impossible. The scientist might argue that the world rotates because of specific physical laws; the believer will argue that it rotates because God has wanted it to. Which one is the better theory? The intuitive answer is that we can establish and prove the scientific arguments and the derived laws in many instances and show that it has general validity. This, however, already happens within the scientific framework which the religious believer will not accept. He will say that his theory is better because the sacred texts of revelation say that God created the world and therefore created it as rotating. In order to accept this argument, however, we have to buy into his core assumptions which the scientist does not.

Another way to find a ‘rational’ solution to this dilemma could be that one cannot show that God exists but one can show that gravity exists. Thankfully, Wight provides us with a readymade counter-argument. He says that the model of science he proposes ‘[m]uch like gravitational and magnetic fields, … cannot be empirically identified independently of its effects. Scientific realists argue that it can be known to exist through its causal powers, but not shown to exist’.Footnote 45

The same, however, can be said of God. We cannot prove that God exists but through his work we can know he exists. On this basis, for instance, looking at differing views on the causes of the hurricane Katrina that destroyed New Orleans we can either say that specific natural processes led to the disaster or we can say that God brought the destruction on the city to punish the ‘promiscuous’ and ‘blasphemous’ behaviour of its inhabitants. Like it or not, there is no way we can decide which ‘theory’ is more accurate or better. The force behind the causes for Katrina cannot be shown to exist, as scientific realists admit, and therefore our decision to ascribe causal power to natural processes or God is in this case dependent upon our system of belief which is socially legitimised. At the end of the day we have no neutral frame of reference or standard of judgement that is at our disposal in a non-conceptualised way on the basis of which differing claims can be assessed – there are no uninterpreted facts and subsequently there always are incommensurable positions which leads to a situation in which a decision which approach is better cannot be made.

Overall, therefore, we are left with a rather problem-laden reconceptualisation of ontology. In fact we seem to have come full circle to the initial interpretation of Kratochwil's argument that world-images and systems of knowledge are inextricably intertwined and neither can justifiably serve as a secure and indubitable base. The crux in Wendt's and Wight's arguments lies with the fact that they commit themselves willingly or not to a foundationalist enterprise and whether based on ontology or epistemology this move is indeed a very modern one.

Apart from that, scientific realism in the form Wendt and Wight present is not able to confirm the existence of this ontologically given reality beyond human existence. As was shown by reference to examples from the natural as well as social sciences above, any attempt to grasp these ‘intransitive’ objects unavoidably draws them into a web of linguistic meanings dependent on social practices. Ontology and epistemology are always intertwined and cannot be conceptualised independent of one another. Their attempt just to say and rely on what ‘is’ and then devise ex post epistemological tools to establish knowledge is as misguided as any attempt to devise epistemological tools in order to discern what ‘is’. Any conceptualisation of what ‘is’ already takes place within a system of social meanings and knowledge in the same way as any conceptualisation of what can be known already exists within a framework of assumptions about what ‘is’.

The key to the problems with the re-conceptualisations of ontology as attempted by Wendt and Wight in recent years is to be found in their neglect of the role of language. As Peter Winch in his seminal work in 1958 already argued: ‘To ask whether reality is intelligible is to ask about the relation between thought and reality. In considering the nature of thought one is led also to consider the nature of language. Inseparably bound up with the question whether reality is intelligible, therefore, is the question of how language is connected with reality, of what it is to say something’.Footnote 46

It seems therefore that if we accept the initial thrust of Wendt's and Wight's arguments that a foundationalist concern with epistemology leads to a misrepresentation of the (social) world and a re-conceptualisation of ontology might provide some alleviation we have to start not by positing some ontological realm independent of human agency and therefore commit ourselves to an ontological foundationalism but rather ask what makes ‘reality’ intelligible in the way it is. For this, it seems, we have to turn to the crucial role of language.

Language and the way towards a new social ontology

We have so far dealt with the contentions of scientific realism as it is presented in some circles of IR theory in respect to three points: ontological primacy, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationalism. As we have shown, scientific realism shows weaknesses in respect to all three of these notions. We also stipulated that the main reason for these weaknesses seems to lie in the neglect of the nature and role of language especially in respect to the social realm and subsequently in the concomitantly relied upon notion of ontology.

One other element which poses a major concern for scientific realists and which will help to illuminate this point further is the question about the reality of ontological entities. As Colin Wight argues, there is a tendency in some approaches in IR to treat concepts as not really referring to real entities ‘out there’ but as placeholders that help facilitating access to the social world.Footnote 47 As such these concepts have no existence beyond the conventionalism and instrumental purpose they serve as ideationally structuring the world. Based on this supposition which is another instantiation of the long-fought battle between realists and nominalists Wight naturally comes to the conclusion that only two possibilities exist. Either, following the nominalist mode, we treat concepts and terms referring to unobservables as purely ideationally existent, that is, as depending on the human mind. The reference for these terms does not lie in an independent reality but in a purely abstract conceptual realm and they serve purely instrumental means. Or, and this is the position Wight is presenting, we accept a deeper notion of reality and accept that these terms find their references in the ‘real world’ as existing independent of the mind.

So, what are we left with? Are there only these two alternatives in respect to our conceptualisation of ontological entities? Do we really have to choose between a nominalism which denies reality to ontological entities and a realism that posits these entities as real but independent of the human mind? The answer to this question, as will be argued in the remainder of this article, is no. There is a possibility to overcome this dilemma, not through a middle way or third alternative that operates within the same frame of reference but by transposing the problem in toto and searching for a new social ontology, that is, a different understanding of what ontology is about.

Access to this endeavour is possible when we consider the underlying notion of the nature of language. Language in the abovementioned dichotomy is conceptualised along designative lines, to borrow a term from Charles Taylor. In his essay Language and Human Nature Taylor describes a designative understanding of language as follows: ‘There are two sides or dimensions of meaningful objects, which can each be taken up as the guiding thread of an answer. The first is what we could call the designative: we could explain a sign or word having meaning by pointing to what it designates, in a broad sense, that is, what it can be used to refer to in the world, and what it can be used to say about that thing’.Footnote 48

Language for the nominalist as well as for the realist consists of a system of signs with fixed meanings that help to conceptualise the world. The disagreement as we have seen is not about the function of language but about the states of affairs described by it. Nominalists stipulate that the terms used only structure ‘reality’ without having points of reference outside the human mind – for them the terms used refer to concepts deployed by the mind. Realists, on the other side, see real entities as referents of these terms. Both, however, see language as a tool that can be used to describe something or designate meaningful connections between processes in the world. This view of language has been the dominant one throughout the modern period and can be found in almost all accounts in IR as well.

As is already apparent in this conceptualisation of language as designative is the opposition between the individual language user and the world in which the object designated by language exists. As such this conception of language is very much in line with Enlightenment thought since it posits the subjective consciousness as distinct from the world it inhabits and also ascribes the ability to reflect on this world from a detached and objective or neutral point of view. This conceptualisation of human agency as explained above emerged to centre stage with Cartesian philosophy and has dominated the philosophical discourse of the Enlightenment since then. Overall one can say that ‘[t]his project assumes that language is one of the object supremely constituted by consciousness, and that actual languages are very special cases of a possible language which consciousness holds the key to – that they are systems of signs linked to their meaning by univocal relationships which, in their structure as in their function, are susceptible to a total explication’.Footnote 49

If we follow Charles Taylor further, however, we find a different conception of language, which is no less distinguished in its genealogical development. This conception of language Taylor called expressivist and it can be traced back to thinkers such as Hamann, Herder and Humboldt as well as the later Wittgenstein and post-Husserlian phenomenology (here most notably in Heidegger, Gadamer and Merleau-Ponty).Footnote 50 In this view, language is the medium in which human existence is immersed and according to which it allocates meaning. It is not to be found in individual consciousnesses as the designative conception would claim but is exercised in the public realm and constantly contested.

Language in an expressivist view relies upon a wider, holistic understanding of linguistic practices. The main point of difference here lies with the fact that contrary to the designative approach language is seen as a social construct. It does not rely upon an individual consciousness that shares modes of perception with others but derives its function from its place in the public space. ‘The language-user is not a Cartesian subject in sovereign control of meanings; these are socially produced from the fabric of daily life within which various customs and practices are performatively enacted’.Footnote 51 Whereas language is more a tool for articulation of thought in the designative model it represents more the opportunity for self-discovery and self-expression for the expressionists. Language hereby gains its power not from representational functions but from participation in the language community from which it develops and to which we all belong. This sense of language community of course means that language cannot be located alone in a Cartesian consciousness but that meanings are shared publicly and also re-shaped in public discourse. The subject involved in this community acquires a capacity to take part in communication but is never fully in control of language. Rather the linguistic development is a dialogical and continuous process publicly exercised within a language community in the form of language-games.Footnote 52 And in the same way language is never fully understood and controlled, the subjects themselves are involved in a constant re-interpretation in respect to their self-understanding.Footnote 53

The expressivist conception of language has far-reaching implications especially in respect to our conceptions of what characterises human existence in general. The Heideggerian concept of Dasein seems to be particularly illuminating here. Dasein for Heidegger constitutes the pre-subjective form of human existence. Dasein is not a definite actual thing, but the possibility of various ways of being. Central is the view that ‘humans are given their content neither by an ahistorical, transcultural essence, nor by nature. Rather, Dasein itself determines this content in its act of self-understanding’.Footnote 54 Central to this understanding of human existence is the embedded character of Dasein in a world. Heidegger calls this ‘Geworfenheit’ – thrownnessFootnote 55 and expresses such a state with the term facticity: ‘“Facticity” is the name that Heidegger gives to Dasein's determinacy as an existential entity. Despite Heidegger's referring to it as Dasein's own manner of “occurrentness”, […] he wants to contrast it with whatever might be natural in Dasein’.Footnote 56

Dasein in this sense is never a finished state but always involved in becoming. All the existential characteristics of Dasein are not to be understood as mere factual appearances or state-characteristics. On the contrary, since Dasein is always already involved in the world and constantly exhibits a form of self-understanding; its characteristics are ability-characteristics.Footnote 57 To be clear, and Heidegger acknowledges this, it is of course possible to make statements regarding only the factual characteristics of Dasein but only under the pretence of ignoring the ‘existential make-up’ of being-in-the-world. ‘… those beings which are not worldless, for example Da-sein itself, are objectively present “in” the world, too. More precisely, they can be understood within certain limits and with a certain justification as something merely objectively present. To do this, one must completely disregard or just not see the existential constitution of being-in’.Footnote 58

Having said this, reactions to and interpretations of facticity are not given but remain a matter of choice. But are these choices completely our own? Arguably they are not. Rather, ‘[t]he concept of facticity implies that an “innerworldly” being has being-in-the-world in such a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its “destiny” with the being of those beings which it encounters within its own world’.Footnote 59 This situatedness or being-in-the-world is missed in modern conceptions of subjectivity and agency.Footnote 60 Against a post-Cartesian conception of subjectivity and agency, Heidegger's notion of facticity allows for a reconceptualisation that sees human subjectivity not as self-transparent but self-transcendent in the sense that our situatedness in the world influences and is influenced by our constant involvement in a world which forecloses any successful completion of the pursuit of understanding or controlling this world.Footnote 61 The world or what can be called ‘reality’ is then always beyond the complete grasp of the human subjects immersed in it and yet remains in its very meaning reliant upon Dasein, that is, human involvement in general. The crucial difference between human being and human beings in such a conceptualisation provides a new way to grasp our relation to the world by overcoming the monadic conception of consciousness derived from Descartes and defended in many instances of IR scholarship.

Following such conceptions of language as expressivist and Dasein as facticity would allow a new approach towards the study of social and political phenomena that is partly already exercised in IR. The expressivist view of language sees human agents always already submerged in systems of meaning. The important point here, in line with the conception of Dasein outlined above, is that these systems of meaning do not emanate from a single consciousness or a group of single consciousnesses. This point is important because it disarms Wight's concerns that reality can simply change when the human mind decided it should change.Footnote 62 ‘Reality’ in such a linguistically and publically guided system of meaning arises not out of individual consciousnesses but finds itself as the contested and constantly reshaped frame of human existence. The gap between mind and nature that still haunts the scientific realist account presented here is overcome by relying upon a notion of intentionality that opens horizons in which the publicly negotiated and mediated frame of reference interprets the enabling and constraining conditions and thereby constitutes reality without making it reducible to single consciousnesses.

Also, we can see that the abovementioned problems with grasping ‘intransitive objects’ do not even arise within the confines of an expressivist view of language. As was discussed above, the frame of reference in which ontological entities are experienced and encountered structures the conditions and possibilities of action. The constraints, although they depend on humanly devised systems of meaning cannot be reduced to mere fantasies that can be changed at will and therefore deny any reality outside the human mind.Footnote 63 Wight and other scientific realists are right to claim that such a view would run counter to the experiences and practices we are engaged in everyday. The structures in question are very ‘real’ for the humans acting within their confines; and yet, they do not exist independent of the humans instantiating them. By transposing the mediation and deliberation of these social practices away from ‘inside’ individual minds into the ‘collective’ mind of society they exist ‘mind-independent’ (if we understand ‘mind’ as a Cartesian consciousness) but not independent of human existence. Human existence or human being must hereby not be misunderstood as ‘a’ human being or a number of human beings but refers to the totality of human existence. The social interaction and the concomitant emergence of shared meanings and practices that constrains and enables our actions is always already beyond the individual and can therefore never be changed by ‘a’ human being but only in social discourse. Human being is thereby the space in which other entities (observables as well as unobservables) can be what they are; human being lets them be so to say.Footnote 64

In this sense it is important to note that the normative structure that arises out of the public mediation and negotiation must indeed be seen as having causal effects (which means it must be seen as enabling and constraining) on human action. Scientific realists are absolutely right to claim that the standard conception of causality as efficient causality puts any engagement with the social and political world into a straight jacket and creates rifts within the discipline that are unnecessary and misguided.Footnote 65 It is, however, likewise the case and of equal importance to realise that not only are norms causes but also that causes are norms. As we have seen above when looking at Wendt's example of the fact that ‘Pigs can't fly’, the way in which we interpret the reasons of this ‘fact’ conditions (in other words ‘norms’) our attitude towards this fact and its consequences for us. In a religiously guided discourse it is more likely that we accept this fact as an example of Gods action on earth, in a scientific discourse we are more inclined to find a physical force that can be manipulated and possibly overcome. The frame of reference in which we let this fact be what it is creates hereby a normative space which again assumes causal power. The fact is never graspable outside or beyond the collective interpretive frame of reference. It is not possible, as was argued before, to posit the fact as existent and subsequently devise means to understand and approach it. We as humans can only approach it with an understanding in place. Heidegger describes the relation towards objects we encounter through the threefold structure of interpretation. We encounter an object never in a neutral, abstract or distanced way but relate to it intentionally and interpretively through Vorhabe (fore-having), Vorsicht (fore-sight), and Vorgriff (fore-conception).Footnote 66 Here we find again the crucial difference between a traditional conception of ontology and Heidegger's fundamental ontology (Fundamentalontologie). The argument here is not that the way we gain knowledge and approach the world in thought depends on the material circumstances we find ourselves in; it is not an argument that tries to establish the primacy of beings over thought as it is in Wendt and Wight. Rather, the question here aims at delineating the mode of discovery, a primordial relation to the world that characterizes human agency and constant involvement in the world; it is an argument that enquires into the nature of (human) being.

Here we reach again the insight defended above that ways of being and ways of knowing are inextricably intertwined. It seems therefore that we always have to consider both sides: norms as causes but also causes as norms.

If we link these insights back to Winch's original question regarding the intelligibility of reality we can see that language is the medium in which we express our self-understanding and situatedness in the world and allocate meaning to the entities we encounter. Such an allocation of meaning does not derive from a primordial deliberation or even ‘direct access’ to ontological entities but always presupposes and takes place within an involvement in an already encountered world. Just to point this out very clearly, the impossibility to encounter the world ‘directly’ is not as often stipulated an embracement of a form of idealism that separates human consciousness from the world ‘out there’. As Edmund Husserl has shown, such a conceptualisation simply reproduces the dichotomy between mind and nature and all its concomitant problems. Rather, and again following Husserl and his phenomenology, we have to see consciousness as always already reaching into the world, as constantly intending the world. ‘It is not trivial to say that consciousness is “consciousness of” objects; on the contrary, this statement goes against many common beliefs. One of phenomenology's greatest contributions is to have broken out of the egocentric predicament, to have checkmated the Cartesian doctrine. Phenomenology shows that the mind is a public thing, that it acts and manifests itself out in the open, not just inside its own confines’.Footnote 67 The point hereby is exactly not to either deny or defend access to the things themselves outside and independent of human being. Rather, we have to realise that what we call ‘reality’ is publicly exercised and not just privately experienced.

Colin Wight is right to say in this respect that it is ludicrous to assume that unobservables such as the state will cease to exist if the social sciences cease to exist.Footnote 68 But it would cease to exist if humans cease to exist. This is an important point because it shows that the emphasis Wight and other scientific realists are putting on science is missing the point. In their view science arises out of our encounter (constraining and enabling) with ontological entities ‘out there’.Footnote 69 Surely, we had many different ways to practice science but overall this plurality shares the task to theoretically grasp what can and cannot be said about the world. The problem, however, is that they take the persistence of ontological entities beyond the confines of science as a proof that these objects exist independent of human being. This is simply not the case. The state as an unobservable structure is constituted not by the theoretical musings of scientists but neither is it detached from the human world. Wight seems to realise this problem to a certain degree when he states: ‘Of course, social objects are not mind-independent in the same way that natural objects are … .But there are a lot of complicated issues here surrounding the issue of just what mind the object is dependent upon’.Footnote 70 The problem is that Wight never thinks of the possibility that ‘dependent on the human mind’ and ‘dependent on human being’ are two separate states of affairs.

It is obvious that states would cease to exist as unobservable structures when humans cease to exist. Therefore, it seems that there must be a third way to conceptualise the ‘reality’ of unobservables in the social world – states do not simply exist nominally in our minds but neither do they exist ‘really’ in the world ‘out there’. The key to solve this dilemma is simply a detachment of consciousness and human being and a refocusing of our enquiry onto the practices that constitute the state and lets it be what it is. This simply means that the state indeed transcends the individual consciousnesses that inhabit or encounter it. On the other hand, however, the publicity of human minds in Husserl's sense constitutes the state as an unobservable entity dependent on human being (note that it is a dependency on human being not human beings!) This way we get out of the dilemma sketched above: the state is not just a nominalist entity dependent on consciousness but neither has it to be posited outside the confines of human existence to be ‘real’ and assume enabling and constraining effects.

In our understanding of the constitution of such unobservable social entities the role of social and linguistic practices can hardly be overstated. As we have seen a theory of the state as a relation between mind and independent object is a false abstraction. After all, the state as we conceptualise it now did not come into being through theoretical reflection but through practical concerns and intentional (in a Husserlian sense) action. To understand it, it seems plausible, we need to look much more closely at these practices rather than trying to conceptualise the entity in abstracto. Language in its expressivist understanding is hereby a key element as it highlights the public and illocutionary characteristics inherent in linguistic usage and the subsequent emergence of meaning. As Heidegger pointed out: ‘Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man’.Footnote 71

The intelligibility of reality is thereby not dependent on presupposed epistemological conceptions; but neither can it be achieved by positing an ontological domain independent of human existence. The role of human being and its immersion into social and linguistic practices provide hereby the space that lets beings be the way they are and at the same time provides an understanding that is always already shaped by our constant situatedness and involvement in the world, our being-in-the-world to say it with Heidegger.

Towards a new social ontology

What do all these reflections lead to in the end? There are two possible answers to this question, an easy one and a more difficult one. The easy one is to fuse scientific realism and its focus on ontological matters with the insights on language presented above. In other words, we can simply ‘add-on’ our insights onto scientific realism and proceed in the conviction of having improved a specific approach. Or, and this is the second alternative, we have to reconceptualise our understanding of ontology completely. It seems that while the first solution is tempting as ‘improvement’ seems to fit so nicely with the evolutionary convictions of the sciences, the second is in the long run unavoidable. The centrality of language which was pointed out above is not the end point of our conceptualisations but rather provides the starting point for a much bigger and broader reflection of how to approach the social realm.

As we have seen the expressivist view of language is at odds with the notion of a Cartesian consciousness. The reliance upon self-transparency and the capacity of the mind to gain knowledge about other ontological entities that exist outside its purview is not sustainable within an expressivist view of language. Such a conception of the human mind relies upon what Heidegger called a ‘metaphysics of presence’.

We have seen above that language and the way we access beings linguistically does not allow for a representation of objective or ‘intransitive objects’ that lie outside the human purview. As was already hinted at above, the focus on ontology that we find in scholars such as Alexander Wendt and Colin Wight reproduces the problems of foundationalism that we have encountered so many times before. It does so because the notion of ontology both rely on marks already a pre-conception of the nature of being that subsequently leads to inconsistencies. One way to portray this pre-conception and show the way towards an alternative is a reflection on the work of Martin Heidegger. In his article The end of philosophy and the task of thinking Heidegger explores the general attitude of philosophy as metaphysics. This notion and understanding of philosophy we can also find in Wendt and Wight. As Heidegger points out:

‘Philosophy is metaphysics. Metaphysics thinks beings as a whole – the world, man, God – with respect to Being, with respect to the belonging together of beings in Being. Metaphysics thinks beings as being in the manner of representational thinking that gives reasons. For since the beginning of philosophy and with that beginning, the Being of beings has showed itself as the ground (arche, aition, principle). The ground is that from which beings as such are what they are in their becoming, perishing, and persisting as something that can be known, handled, and worked upon. As the ground, Being brings beings to their actual presencing. The ground shows itself as presence. The present of presence consists in the fact that it brings what is present each in its own way to presence. In accordance with the actual kind of presence, the ground has the character of grounding as the ontic causation of the real, as the transcendental making possible of the objectivity of objects, as the dialectical mediation of the movement of the absolute Spirit and of the historical process of production, as the will to power positing values. What characterizes metaphysical thinking that grounds the ground for beings is the fact that metaphysical thinking, starting from what is present, represents it in its presence and thus exhibits it as grounded by its ground’.Footnote 72

What we can find in recent publications on ontology is exactly this preoccupation with the presence of beings that provides the ground from which further investigations are conducted. The preoccupation with the study of beings that are present (observables as well as unobservables) penetrates already into the realm of the modern mindset in which these ‘objects’ or beings are ontically empowered with forms of causation, characteristics to be known, elements to be controlled. We encounter here the objective attitude that sets the human being apart from these objects and makes them mind-independent. It is, however, exactly this move that brings back the dilemma that we thought was left behind. If these beings in their way of being are independent of human existence the question of how to bridge the gap between mind and nature remains. Even if we claim that forms of being can be grasped by different forms of knowing, any form of knowing, however determined, must account for the way the beings in question are known. A mere recourse to epistemological pluralism is not enough here. We find the source of this problematic in the attitude of encounter. As Heidegger rightly stated, ‘an essential distinction prevails between comprehending the ensemble of beings in themselves and finding oneself in the midst of beings as a whole’.Footnote 73

The modern scientific attitude represents the first alternative that tries to comprehend the ensemble of beings in themselves. Compartmental science as we understand it today with its topical differentiation is first and foremost concerned with beings. ‘But what is remarkable is that, precisely in the way scientific man secures to himself what is most properly his, he speaks of something different. What should be examined are beings only, and besides that – nothing; beings alone, and further – nothing; solely beings, and beyond that – nothing’.Footnote 74 This attitude already presupposes a concept of man that sees human beings apart from other beings and in possible control of them.Footnote 75 Beings can be observed, known and manipulated in many different ways, within and across the different sciences. The boundaries of this ‘ensemble of beings’ are given by the way the essential features of the beings in question. This is exactly the point where we encounter the abovementioned problem that leads us full circle to the problem scientific realists were eager to circumvent – the question of epistemology. Even if we posit a world of intransitive objects outside human minds and inscribe these objects with certain powers which constrain and enable human agency, we are still faced with the need to account for the criteria we used in order to establish the knowledge about what these intransitive objects are. It is exactly not enough to posit these beings as existent and then acknowledge subsequently many ways in which they can be known. There is a necessity to state what these objects are independent of and prior to epistemological engagement. Only then can the causal power transcribed into these beings be original to them. If the causal powers these objects have arise out of the epistemological treatment, however, nothing has been gained since such a conception leads us back to the proposition that was the starting point for our criticism. As we have argued above an original pre-epistemological and neutral statement about what these intransitive objects are seems impossible due to the restrictions that language imposes on us. This conception of language is captured by the second alternative in which beings as a whole can be encountered.

This second alternative is grasped by the formulation of ‘finding oneself in the midst of beings as a whole’. Here the gap between mind and nature seems avoidable when we accept that human beings are not qualitatively distinct from the environment they live in. The question, however, that obviously arises out of this conceptualisation is how, when placed into the midst of beings, these beings can be grasped as a whole. There are two elements that seem to be important. First, Heidegger argues that in different moods we relate to the totality of beings in different ways. Secondly, and more importantly for us right now, is the fact that whereas the boundaries in the first alternative were determined by observation form the outside, in the second alternative they are constructed linguistically from the insight. Wittgenstein was right to claim in this respect that ‘die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt (the boundaries of my language constitute the boundaries of my world)’.Footnote 76 We find a similar idea in Heidegger's dictum that “language is the house of being”’.Footnote 77

Subsequently a major shift occurs in our conception of the beings around us and our role in constituting them. To grasp the way beings are requires a deeper investigation into the meaning of being and the especially human being. Human beings are not just present among or beside other beings. Rather human being or Dasein is constitutive of the meaning of beings it encounters, or, in other words, Dasein lets beings be what they are.Footnote 78 We can see here already that a simple inclusion of linguistic determinants into the ontological conception we found in Wendt and Wight will not do as the role of language hinted at here overturns the whole ontology they present, or even more radically, it overturns the whole meaning of ontology they exhibit. As Wittgensteinian scholars in IR have already pointed out, language is crucial here since it is not just a set of ‘labels that can be compared with the world. Wittgenstein demonstrates that language is constitutive of the world. We cannot get behind our language and compare it with that which it describes’.Footnote 79 An enquiry into the nature of beings must necessarily start with an account of the form of being that encounters the beings in question and draws them into its awareness. Out of this arises the necessity to conceptualise a path that overcomes the problems encountered in forms of epistemological or ontological foundationalism.

We must radically challenge the way beings were apprehended in the sciences as we understand them today. Such an endeavour requires much more space than is at our disposal in this article. Suffice it to say here that if we take the difficulties encountered in recent attempts to reconceptualise ontology for the study of international relations seriously, we have to start rethinking the concept of ontology as such and concomitantly reconceptualise our understanding of such central terms as agency, structure, language, truth and freedom accordingly. The focus must hereby not lie, as Chris Brown has rightly pointed out in his response to critical realism, in meta-theoretical pseudo-debates but by taking practice seriously. Questions that will arise in this endeavour and that demand answers are not aiming at delineating theoretical facts about core concepts but praxeological features which condition the practical possibilities of the social ontology subsequently conceptualised. In this respect, we must not ask ‘What is agency?’ but rather ‘What are agents doing?’, we must not ask ‘What is language?’ but rather ‘How is language used?’, we must not ask ‘What is freedom?’ but rather ‘What are the praxeological conditions of action?’ and we must not ask ‘What is truth?’ but rather ‘How are practices verified and validated?’.

These tasks have to be left for later research but we hope that one way to deal with resurfacing problems regarding the role and relationship between ontology and epistemology has been sketched out. Wherever the quest might lead us in respect to these questions, it seems right now that in many cases Heidegger's dictum still stands: ‘The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking’.Footnote 80

References

1 Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, ‘Foregrounding Ontology: dualism, monism, and IR theory’, Review of International Studies, 34:1 (2008), p. 129.

2 Ibid., p. 130.

3 Ibid., p. 131.

4 Ibid., p. 132.

5 Colin Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations: Politics as Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 1–2 and Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 6.

6 Wendt, Social Theory; Heikki Patomäki and Colin Wight, ‘After Post-Positivism? The Promise of Critical Realism’, International Studies Quarterly, 44 (2000), pp. 213–37; Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations; Milja Kurki, ‘Causes of a divided discipline: rethinking the concept of cause in International Relations theory’, Review of International Studies, 32:2 (2006), pp. 189–216; Colin Wight, ‘Inside the epistemological cave all bets are off’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 10 (2007), pp. 40–56; Colin Wight, ‘A Manifesto for Scientific Realism in IR: Assuming the Can-Opener Won't Work!’, in Millennium: Journal for International Studies, 35:2 (2007), pp. 379–98; Milja Kurki, ‘Critical Realism and Causal Analysis in International Relations’, in Millennium: Journal for International Studies, 35:2 (2007), pp. 361–78; Jonathan Joseph, ‘Philosophy in International Relations: A Scientific Realist Approach’, Millennium: Journal for International Studies, 35:2 (2007), pp. 345–59.

7 For a convincing critique of such a view see Friedrich Kratochwil, ‘Of communities, gangs, historicity and the problem of Santa Claus: replies to my critics’, in Journal of International Relations and Development, 10 (2007), pp. 57–78.

8 Martin Heidegger, Ontology – The Hermeneutics of Facticity, translated by John van Buren (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 5.

9 See for instance the excellent study by Louiza Odysseos, The Subject of Coexistence (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2007).

10 Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 25.

11 Ibid., p. 1.

12 Ibid., p. 2.

13 Ibid.

14 Other examples of Wight's rather superficial engagement with Kratochwil's thought can be found in Wight, ‘Inside the Epistemological Cave’ and Wight, ‘Manifesto for Scientific Realism’.

15 Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 3

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., fn. 3.

19 Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions. On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 21.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Kratochwil, ‘Replies to my Critics’, p. 72 and Karin Fierke, Diplomatic Interventions. Conflict and Change in a Globalizing World (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 7. FN).

23 Kratochwil, ‘Replies to my Critics’, p. 72.

24 Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 2.

25 For this position see for instance Alexander Wendt, ‘The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory’, International Organization, 41:3 (1987), pp. 355 and 370; Alexander Wendt, ‘Constructing International Politics, International Security, 20:1 (1995), p. 75; Kurki, ‘Critical Realism and Causal Analysis’, pp. 364–65 and Joseph, ‘A Scientific Realist Approach’, p. 346.

26 Wendt, Social Theory, p. 51 and Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 26.

27 Wendt, Social Theory, p. 22.

28 Wight, Agents Structures and International Relations, p. 29.

29 Ibid., p. 55.

30 Wendt, Social Theory, pp. 58–9.

31 Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 26.

32 Ibid., p. 29.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., p. 28.

35 Ibid., p. 55.

36 Ibid.

37 Wendt, Social Theory, p. 56.

38 A perfect example for such a view is Malebranchian occasionalism.

39 W. B. Macomber, The Anatomy of Disillusion. Martin Heidegger's Notion of Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), p. 75.

40 Wight, Agents, Structures and International Relations, p. 55.

41 Wight, Agents, Structure and International Relations, p. 19.

42 Ibid., p. 39.

43 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

44 Ibid., p. 42.

45 Ibid., p. 51.

46 Peter Winch, ‘The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relations to Philosophy’ (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 11.

47 Wight, ‘Manifesto for Scientific Realism’, pp. 379–80.

48 Charles Taylor, ‘Philosophical papers. Human Agency and Language’, 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 218.

49 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, ‘On the Phenomenology of Language’, John O'Neill (ed.), Phenomenology, Language and Sociology. Selected essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (London: Heinemann, 1974), p.81.

50 Chris Lawn, Wittgenstein and Gadamer. Towards a Post-Analytic Philosophy of Language (London and New York: Continuum, 2006), p. 14–7.

51 Ibid., p. 15.

52 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), p. 11 and Steven Shaviro, ‘From Language to “Forms of Life”: Theory and Practice in Wittgenstein’, Social Text, 13/14 (1986), pp. 216–36. In an IR context see also Karin Fierke, ‘Links Across the Abyss: Language and Logic in International Relations’, International Studies Quarterly, 46:3 (2002), p. 337.

53 Georgia Warnke, Gadamer. Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), p. 38.

54 William Blattner, ‘Existence and Self-Understanding in Being and Time’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 56:1 (1996), p. 97.

55 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. A Translation of Sein und Zeit, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 127.

56 Blattner, ‘Existence and Self-Understanding’, p. 102.

57 Ibid., p. 100.

58 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 52. See also Hubert L Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World. A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I, (New Baskerville: MIT Press, 1991), p. 44.

59 Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 52.

60 Dominique Janicaud, ‘The Question of Subjectivity in Heidegger's Being and Time’, in Simon Critchley and Peter Dews (eds), Deconstructive Subjectivities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), p. 49.

61 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture’, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, translated by William Lovitt (New York: Harper, 1977), p. 133.

62 Wight, ‘Manifesto for Scientific Realism’, p. 392.

63 James DiCenso, Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth. A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), p. 116.

64 Macomber, Anatomy of Disillusion, p. 102.

65 For a pithy and concise treatment concerning the role of causation in IR see for instance Kurki, ‘Causes of a Divided Discipline’, pp. 189–216.

66 Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 140–1. See also Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, pp. 198–9.

67 Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 11–2.

68 Wight, ‘Manifesto for Scientific Realism’, p. 389.

69 Ibid., p. 383.

70 Ibid., p. 389.

71 Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, in David Farrell Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (London and New York: Routledge, FN) 2007), p. 348.

72 Martin Heidegger, ‘The End of Philosophy and the Task for Thinking’, in David Farrell Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 432.

73 Martin Heidegger, ‘What is Metaphysics?,’ in David Farrell Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 99.

74 Ibid., p. 95. A detailed critique of the modern notion of science and its conceptualisation of the world as ‘picture’ and human beings as ‘subjects’ can be found in Martin Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays.

75 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture’, in The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, p. 133.

76 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), pp. 114–5.

77 Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter on Humanism’, in David Farrell Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 237.

78 Macomber, Anatomy of Disillusion, p. 107.

79 Karin Fierke, Changing Games, Changing Strategies. Critical Investigations in Security (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1998), p. 3.

80 Martin Heidegger, ‘What calls for Thinking’, in David Farrell Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger. Basic Writings from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964) (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 370.