Why care?

Discussing matters of philosophy of science within the boundaries of an academic field, which seems to have a fairly well-delineated subject matter, a carefully circumscribed universe of cases to struggle with, is a distinct deviation from normal science. Yet, meta-theoretical quarrels have been lurking on the boundaries of International Relations (IR) ever since the field constituted itself as a relatively autonomous academic enterprise.Footnote ¹ Never at the centre of the discipline, philosophy of science debates have still been among the most tenacious ones, so there doesn't seem to be a need to justify or legitimate such intellectual pursuits. Suffice it to say that among the many niches of International Relations as a discipline there may also be one dealing with meta-theoretical inquiry.

Such a pluralist take seems laudable at the first glance, yet myopic at the second one. It is too easy to simply explain away the conspicuous presence of meta-theoretical interests among students of International Relations by somehow trying to integrate it into the canon of legitimate scholarly activities. To be sure, any field of study needs to systematically address its basic theoretical and methodological presumptions. For the most part, however, this is done in textbooks and methodological primers, which tend to deal with such issues in a self-consciously preliminary way. ‘We need to address this, because it is generally considered to be important, so let's get over it and get to work on real issues as quickly as possible.’ A genuine interest in meta-theoretical affairs as they pertain to a particular, substantive field of study is typically of a different character. Rather than a routinised activity, which could easily be integrated into a standardised model of scientific professionalisation, where an increasingly complex division of labour ultimately devises a corner for meta-theoretical reflections, a turn to meta-theory signifies a more fundamental unease with precisely those patterns of routinised conduct. The enterprise of problematising, unpacking, and reframing fundamental ‘ontological’ and ‘epistemological’ questions thrives on the presumption that there is something wrong with the way in which these questions are typically dealt with. Debating meta-theory within the context of International Relations is thus a deliberate, critical deviation from practices of normal science. Meta-theory is, in other words, a symptom of crisis. It becomes an issue for students of international politics only to the extent that routines of everyday research practice are considered to be problematic.Footnote ²

So what precisely is the trouble with normal science? Even among critical and scientific realists, who have been most outspoken in pressing for the need of meta-theoretical inquiry and, in fact, successfully established themselves as the gravitational centre of such debate, there does not seem to be a common denominator. Rather, positions seem to oscillate between two poles, which allow for a variety of creative combinations. The quest for ‘better stories on world politics’Footnote ³ can, on the one hand, be read as a purely scientific project. Philosophy of science might simply be a tool to produce better theories of international politics – either by directly exerting some positive influence, or, indirectly, by targeting the hurdles which stand in the way of better accounts. The latter argument, in particular, has found resonance in International Relations, most explicitly with Alexander Wendt arguing that ‘in one sense this [scientific realism] changes nothing, since everyone can go about their business as before: empiricists looking for behavioral laws, rationalists building deductive theories, process tracers doing case studies, critical theorists thinking about deep social structures, postmoderns doing critical theory. But the point is that everyone gets to do what they do: from a realist stance epistemology cannot legislate scientific practice.’Footnote ⁴ The sole point of meta-theoretical debates, then, is to establish a vantage point from which a purely method-driven account of social research (vulgo: positivism) can be effectively criticised. What counts as good, legitimate, valid research should be judged on the basis of criteria internal to the specific project and its subject matter, that is, a logic of reconstruction – not in terms of compliance with a set of pre-established rules of scientific method in the singular, which remain entirely external to the specific subject matters and research questions at hand, that is, a logic of subsumtion.Footnote ⁵ Indeed, when it comes to questions of research design, it would be unfair to judge a project applying advanced statistics on the basis of hermeneutic criteria. Similarly, it would be unfair to judge a project centring on detailed and careful ethnographic observation on the basis of statistical criteria. A discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of competing research frameworks and theoretical perspectives is no doubt important. Yet, when different understandings of how theory and empirics relate to each other are at stake (or when the distinction between theory and empirics is being challenged), such an encounter can take place only at the level of theoretical discussion. Empirically adjudicating between competing accounts becomes possible only where a shared set of theoretical and methodological premises is already in place.

Hence, the method-driven account of theoretical pluralism, which invites researchers to ‘test for alternative explanations’ is inherently imbalanced. It remains firmly enshrined within the confines of the neo-positivist consensus. For alternative theoretical perspectives become admissible only to the extent that they are ready to assume the form of a competing hypothesis. To the extent that this rules out research strategies, which do not subscribe to the methodology of hypothesis testing, epistemology does indeed legislate scientific practice. If, however, epistemology must not legislate scientific practice, neither can the philosophy of the social sciences. In fact, the critique of method-driven research would be self-defeating if it simply repeated the criticised move of unilaterally extrapolating a particular idea of what constitutes proper research. The position of a meta-theoretical chair umpire, capable of authoritative adjudications between competing perspectives is just as unavailable as the positivist-empiricist vision of settling each and every debate through empirical adjudication. The purpose of meta-theoretical debates, then, is to broaden the range of research possibilities by emphasising the contingency of conceptual choices, not to delimit them by devising ideal research designs.

On the other hand, better stories can be linked to better outcomes not only in terms of faculties of scientific explanation, but, more ambitiously, in terms of making a difference ‘in the real world’. For Heikki Patomäki, for instance, ‘overcoming international relations’ is not only a scholarly, but also a practical-political challenge; and while Colin Wight concedes that ‘we need to be aware of the limits of our theoretical endeavours if practice is to remain subject to the important process of political negotiation that remains an essential component of practice itself’, he concurs that, ultimately, the question of whether or not to adopt a particular ontological stance depends on ‘whether or not we find the ethico-political consequences of such a definition desirable’.Footnote ⁶

What is at stake here is not only a broad commitment to social research making a difference, exerting some kind of (hopefully) positive effect. Such commitments can be articulated in a variety of different ways ranging from mere expressions of hope to a self-conscious restraint, which imposes limits on the practical usages of scientific ideas out of respect for the autonomy of praxis. After all, an emancipatory project that tells people how to properly emancipate themselves runs into devastating contradictions. For if we, as academics, tell people what to do in order to achieve the desired goal of emancipation, this would in fact be a gross instance of heteronomy. ‘Emancipate yourself!’ is thus an intricately paradoxical request. To their credit, critical realists have neither embraced the technocratic alternative of assuming a general priority of science vis-à-vis practice, nor have they receded into the complacency of a cynical hands-off approach, which merely covers the problems of how knowledge of social processes becomes part and parcel of these very social processes beneath a huge blind spot. Between the scylla of premature activism and the charybdis of ignorant complacency, critical realists have sought to establish a distinctive position, which links the emancipatory potential of the social sciences to a particular form of critical inquiry.

While markedly different in scope and ambition, the internal, scientific and the practical-political rationale for a realist philosophy of science do share a common target. Positivism, broadly understood as a neo-positivist consensus comprised of falsificationism, a focus on covering laws, and ‘some form of pragmatism at basement prices’Footnote ⁷ when it comes to confronting these two with a prickly object of study, is the principal target of both the purely academic and the more activist branch of realist criticism.

What is even more striking is that the often heated exchanges, which have evolved around the claims of scientific and Critical Realism, have almost exclusively involved scholars who share an anti-positivist and anti-empiricist position. Positivists can thus remain in their comfort zone, as they lean back and watch, presumably with some combination of amusement and befuddlement, how critics such as Colin Wight and Friedrich Kratochwil end up in an explosive confrontation, which diverts much of the criticism targeted against positivism into an oddly self-referential debate over ontological and epistemological commitments.Footnote ⁸ In a sadly ironic twist, Chris Brown's hope that Critical Realism may help to resurrect the lacking critical voice of Marxism is thus confirmed.Footnote ⁹ Much to the relief of capitalism, one may presume, Marxists tended to get bogged down in debates over who holds the True Interpretation of Marx's writings. In a similar vein, meta-theoretical debates in IR today seem to develop a tendency to go ballistic over the issue of who is targeting positivism from the right angle.Footnote ¹⁰

Again, scientific and critical realists have assumed a centre-stage position, fending off post-structuralists, Wittgensteinians, and pragmatists alike. To be sure, such debates are inherently interesting as fundamentally different accounts of inquiry are at stake. Yet, they also tend to obscure the fact that realists, Wittgensteinians, pragmatists, and post-structuralists share a common ground in rejecting the neo-positivist consensus. Even those voices in the debate, which could broadly be considered sympathetic to positivism on philosophical grounds engage in meta-theoretical debates mainly to pinpoint the deficiencies of the neo-positivist position.Footnote ¹¹ This creates an oddly twisted constellation. While we could refute the initial suspicion discarding meta-theoretical concerns as unhelpfully abstract by pointing to their inherently problem-driven nature, the charge comes back with a vengeance as soon as philosophy of science debates in IR fall back into patterns of paradigmatic confrontation all too well known from conventional IR theory debates.

Precisely this, however, has become a core concern in IR's philosophy of science debates. Where do you stand on matters of ontology? Where do you stand on matters of epistemology? Which one is to be given priority? Around High Noon team Critical Realism and its critics convene for an ISA roundtable to determine the sharpest shooter. Such an (admittedly stylised) confrontation does have its advantages. It creates visibility and structures the field, thus providing orientation to the uninitiated. On the downside, however, the ontological fixation of the debate has been directly counter-productive to achieving both the goal of a establishing a systematic alternative to the neo-positivist consensus, and the normative aim to link such pursuits to an ‘emancipatory project’. First, a brief discussion of how the distinction between ontology and epistemology has been used in the field, may help to corroborate the claim that, once again, paradigmatic confrontations are of little help.

Ontology, epistemology, and all that

The distinction between ontology and epistemology, and with it the intellectual effort to clarify how the two relate to each other, has come to the fore of International Relations on the unusual occasion of a birthday celebration. In a ‘state of the art’ article, Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie, while spending most of their time discussing the history of regime theory and research on international organisations through the course of the first forty volumes of International Organization, do smuggle in the inconspicuous distinction in order to introduce a subversive line of argument directed not only against regime theory, but against the broader understanding of the social sciences by which it is informed.

Regime theory, they contend, suffers from a fatal misfit between ontology and epistemology. The intersubjective ontology of regimes remains impossible to grasp within the confines of a subjectivist epistemology. As ‘social institutions’ regimes are constituted through ‘convergent expectations’. Categories such as ‘convergent expectations’, or ‘shared understanding’, however, inevitably conjure up and entail ‘a strong element of intersubjectivity’.Footnote ¹² The ontology of international regimes, in short, is an intersubjective one. If we take seriously the notion of intersubjectivity it constitutes a principled alternative to the subject/object distinction. The notion of intersubjective understandings defies the possibility of cognisant subjects standing in opposition to an objectively given world. Hence the problem Kratochwil and Ruggie see with the positivist epistemology of regime theory. If we adopt the category of intersubjective understandings, positivism, which draws a hard and fast line between the subject and the object becomes untenable; if we adopt a positivist epistemology on the other hand, the intersubjective becomes inconceivable. ‘Here, then, we have the most debilitating problem of all: ontology fundamentally contradicts epistemology!’Footnote ¹³ Even the term ‘regime’ itself can be brought to bear only to the extent that there is a shared understanding among regime theorists as to what it is that they are looking for. ‘Ultimately, there exists no external Archimedian point from which regimes can be viewed as they “truly” are. This is so because regimes are conceptual creations not concrete entities.’Footnote ¹⁴

The emphasis on regimes being ‘conceptual creations’ is important here, because it indicates how Kratochwil and Ruggie avoid the slippery slope of ontological foundationalism. While they do insist on an intersubjective ontology of regimes necessitating a more interpretive approach, they explicitly circumvent the foundationalist air that inevitably comes with the language of ontology by applying the category of intersubjectivity onto their own scholarly activity. Kratochwil and Ruggie thus employ the distinction between ontology and epistemology as an analytical tool in order to identify and remedy inconsistencies within a particular body of thought. Much like the concept of regimes itself, ‘ontology’ and ‘epistemology’ are analytical constructs put to use by the community of scholars. According to the analytical take, each and every theory quite trivially entails ontological and epistemological commitments, which we can critically tease out and test for internal consistency. It is important to note, in this context, that Kratochwil and Ruggie endorse an interpretive epistemology on account of a particular understanding of regimes. There is no all-out attack on positivism, not even an exclusive commitment to intersubjective ontologies. The plain and simple argument is that if we adopt a concept of regimes, which does entail a commitment to an intersubjective ontology, epistemology should follow course.

This seems to be by and large compatible, if not congruent, with Wendt's demand that epistemology ought not dictate research practices. A shared critique of empiricism notwithstanding, scientific realists are, however, more ambitious in the scope of their claims. They call for a broader ontological reorientation, which is held to render visible the shared anti-realist presuppositions of positivists and post-positivists. Both protagonist camps of the so-called ‘third debate’, Patomäki and Wight contend, occupy a single, narrow ‘problem-field’, which prioritises epistemology over ontology. The ‘third debate’ thus appears to them as an altogether fruitless enterprise, ‘a sterile and debilitating debate where one side chastises the other for its naïve belief in a world “out there”, while the other berates its mirror image for making the world “all in here” and all the while a third position claims legitimacy in terms of its “middle-groundedness”.’Footnote ¹⁵ To Patomäki and Wight this is not only a sorrow deadlock, but also a tragic misconstrual of the overall theoretical landscape, which curtails the theoretical imagination in the light of shared epistemological predilections. For both, empiricists who seek knowledge of the world ‘out there’, and post-positivists, who seek to inquire into our practices of knowledge generation (as practices of ‘world generation’), adopt an ‘anthropocentric philosophy’.Footnote ¹⁶ The world comes into play only after we have allowed for it, either in terms of sensory perception or in terms of linguistic construction. The empiricist epistemology is obviously radically different from the post-positivist one. Yet the point of contestation – what are the cognitive and/or discursive funnels through which the world becomes knowable – remains firmly within the epistemological square. Inevitably both positivists and post-positivists keep referring to ‘the world’ as it is, prior to and independent from processes of knowledge construction. From the point of view of scientific realism such references are considered to be illicit as long as we remain incapable to theoretically account for them. We refer to a mind-independent world all the time, yet we have no theoretical language that could justify such parlance. This is the problem the proclaimed focus on ontology is held to solve.

Obviously, the distinction between ontology and epistemology here takes on an entirely different form. This is duly noted by Patomäki and Wight as they introduce the distinction between scientific and philosophical ontology.Footnote ¹⁷ Scientific ontologies are concerned with the existential make-up of particular objects of study. Kratochwil and Ruggie's critique of regime theory may serve as an example. To say that regimes consist of intersubjective expectations is to make a statement about the nature of regimes, which crucially shapes the epistemological and methodological horizons of possibilities in the further study of regimes. Similarly, debates as to whether states constitute real persons, person-like actors, or simply articulated projects pertain to the field of scientific ontology. Philosophical ontology is logically prior to any such pursuit; it is not concerned with the constitution of particular objects of study but rather poses a more fundamental set of questions about the ontological constitution of the world in which the study of such particular objects takes place and becomes possible.

Realism as a philosophy of science strives for an intervention at the level of philosophical ontology. Proponents of a realist philosophy of science within IR thus need to establish if and how such an intervention is of any consequence to social scientific inquiry. It does, realists argue, because it rehabilitates the study of intransitive objects, which are otherwise dropped from the portfolio of legitimate objects of study. Intransitive objects are held to exist independently of our knowledge, and exert causal effects whether or not we are aware of them. ‘Capitalism’ or the ‘Westphalian states system’ constitute showcase examples. Obviously, one needs not to be aware of the capitalist structures of the global economy in order to be crucially affected by them. Despite their intangibility, realists claim, broad social forces of this kind ought to be studied, and it is the epistemological preoccupation of positivists and post-positivists alike, which hinders us from doing so. Hence, the need for an ontological reorientation.

Apart from the study of particular intransitive objects, such a reorientation would rehabilitate the kind of ambitious theorising, striving towards a theory of society, which is notoriously neglected in the midst of epistemological quarrels. The point is very well taken, yet it remains controversial at best whether or not philosophical ontology is necessary or even helpful in the process. After all, Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems, which is by any standard the most complex and most ambitious theory of society presently circulating, would self-consciously dismiss calls for an ontological reorientation as an atavistic expression of ‘Old-European thought’ without accepting any limits to the study of the most complex, abstract and invisible social configurations. The realist claims to relevance thus remain controversial. This is neither surprising nor problematic, not even from a realist stance, which, after all, purports to capitalise on fallibilism. Yet, it easily leads into just another deadlocked debate, the course of which is all too easy to foresee. Critical realists claim that Critical Realism makes a difference. Critics of Critical Realism claim that it doesn't make a difference.

Rather than speculating on the merits of Critical Realism in the abstract, I will thus focus on the practical consequences of their agenda. While I remain sympathetic to the stated goals of their project, I find Critical Realism to be ineffective and at times counter-productive in achieving them. In particular, two distinct yet related issues come to mind. With regard to the ethical dimension of scholarship, which critical realists rightfully emphasise, the quest for ontological certainty entails a problem of hierarchicalisation. The problematic relation between knowledge and emancipation, which has been at the centre of critical inquiries into the nexus between theory and praxis tends to be dissolved by introducing a hierarchically superior form of knowledge. In an admittedly polemical short-cut: there is no tension between knowledge and emancipation if we just get our knowledge right, and in order to do so, we should want to adopt Critical Realism. The ethical dilemma inflicted by the quest for ontological certainty, however, merely illustrates a more fundamental problem with the way in which Critical Realism falls short of effectively problematising the traditional distinction between subject and object. Though important in their own right, the following sections can thus be read as an exemplary illustration of a more general problem.

The problem of hierarchicalisation

Both critical realists and most of their critics typically agree that the neo-positivist research routines, which are established enough to consider themselves unproblematic, are deficient for theoretical, methodological, as well as normative reasons. They also agree that opening up debates for an undogmatic influx of ideas from social and political theory as well as the philosophy of science is helpful in overcoming these deficiencies. What they fundamentally disagree on, however, is the role of knowledge thus produced in relation to the theory-praxis problem in the social sciences. Critical realists articulate their theoretical and normative claims in terms of a Quest for Certainty, while pragmatists, post-structuralists, interpretivists, relationalists, Wittgensteinians, Heideggerians, process theorists and the likeFootnote ¹⁸ consider such a quest to be an epistemological obstacle that is intricately linked to the problems at hand. The commitment to ontological certainty is expressed most clearly by Colin Wight, who contends that ‘getting things right is a practical, a political, and an ethical imperative, and although achieving it may be impossible, or knowing when we have achieved it extremely difficult, we cannot give up on the aspiration; not least because the issue of status of theoretical terms is at the heart of the theory-practice issue.’Footnote ¹⁹ Wight's main concern here is with the ‘status’ of the knowledge we produce, that is, with its recognition as hierarchically superior to alternative, untheoretical forms of knowledge production. Theoretically gained knowledge is of a different quality than, say, claims which are merely based on political interest or theological faith. To what extent, however, does such a prioritisation of scientific knowledge support a move towards Critical Realism? Wight's argument is, ultimately, an instrumentalist one. Critical Realism is considered to have the effect of securing the hierarchical superiority of scientific knowledge production vis-à-vis alternative, contending forms of epistemic activity. While it is certainly possible to defend the epistemic authority of the sciences on different grounds, Critical Realism may just be a particularly effective tool of doing so. Interestingly, Wight is thus unable to make an ontological case for ontology. This would, indeed, look like a petitio principii, presupposing the ontological stance already in the attempt to establish it. Such disturbing paradoxes, Günter Dux has argued, are not uncommon within the scheme of bivalent logic. On the contrary, they run through the tradition of occidental thought and define it as systematic inquiry into a world that has become subject of questioning. Why are things like that, why did they not turn out differently? The question presupposes the possibility of gaining access to how it really is, it establishes the distinction between epistéme and doxa and with it the hierarchical superiority of the former over the latter.Footnote ²⁰ Before I turn to attempts to dismantle the ontological project by demonstrating how it is indebted not only to bivalent logic but also to an obsolescent understanding of how society is organised, I should, however, address more thoroughly the normative concerns that critical realists place at the centre of their ontological commitment.

In an exemplary straightforward manner, Heikki Patomäki makes clear that the key purpose of adopting a Critical Realist ontology lies in its alleged potential to explicate more clearly the ‘normative logic of emancipation’. He follows Roy Bhaskar in asserting that ‘the object that renders illusory beliefs necessary comes to be criticized in being explained; so that the point becomes to change it.’ According to Bhaskar, the ‘logic of explanatory emancipation’, in which a particular discursive formation (DF) is criticised with the intent of ideology-critique, requires a critical and an explanatory condition, that is, ‘a superior explanation T1 for the phenomena, and (2) … an explanation T2 of the falsity of the beliefs of DF in question and why they are held’. Patomäki formally summarises the logic of explanatory emancipation as follows:

1. (1) T ₁ is more true (explains and illuminates more) than T_DF; it also covers at least some of the relevant areas of the range of the T_DF, which is an essential part of DF, a ‘near-total’ system.

2. (2) T ₂ explains the (re)production of DF in terms of a causal complex K_i.

3. (3) Thus, one should evaluate negatively the relevant parts of the causal complex K_i that are responsible for the (re)production of false beliefs.

4. (4) Consequently, one should evaluate positively public communicative action directed at removing of changing the relevant parts of K_i.Footnote ²¹

Contra Bhaskar he emphasises, however, that the project of ideology-critique envisioned here is in itself a distinctly normative one. Hence, the normative value of ideology-critique must itself be accounted for in the justification of the overall project. Bhaskar's naturalist solution, which attempts to simply derive its emancipatory agenda from the world as it really is, fails to account for its own normativity. Moreover, Patomäki calls Bhaskar to account for neglecting the problem of undecidability inherent in the practical operations of any such scheme. But does the exercise of theoretically informed criticism then not constitute what Derrida has described as an act of violence, that is, fixating a decision under conditions of genuine undecidability? Patomäki concedes the latter point to Derrida, yet he insists on a distinction between different strategies of public intervention, which may be more or less conducive to ‘preserving or building a sphere for public politics’.Footnote ²² Hence, he reformulates the logic of explanatory emancipation as follows.

1. (1) T ₁ is more true (explains and illuminates more) than T_DF; it also covers at least some of the relevant areas of the range of the T_DF, which is an essential part of DF, a near-total system.

2. (2) Truth is a positive value.

3. (3) Thus, one should evaluate negatively the relevant part of DF, and engage in a discussion about the merits and problems of theories.

4. (4) T ₂ explains the (re)production of DF in terms of a causal complex K_i.

5. (5) Thus, one should evaluate negatively the relevant parts of the causal complex K_i that are responsible for the (re)production of false beliefs.

6. (6) Attempts (3) do not make any difference.

7. (7) T ₁ and T ₂ still hold, even if only in a qualified form.

8. (8) Consequently, one should evaluate positively public communicative action directed at removing of changing the relevant parts of K_i.

9. (9) Either despite the public communicative actions, T_DF (and DF) remains unchanged, or critical communicative actions are not politically possible with respect to the relevant political situation.

10. (10) Thus, one should evaluate positively strategic political action directed at absenting or changing relevant parts of the complex K_i on the condition that the rational persuasion that T ₁ or T ₂ or both are false remains politically possible also with respect to the changed political situation, which is co-caused by that transformative action and its consequences.Footnote ²³

Patomäki is rightfully attentive not only to the normative undergirding of an emancipatory conception of truth (which he simply states as a premise), but also to the difficulty of actually succeeding argumentatively against the tenacity of a firmly established discursive formation. To the extent that Patomäki acknowledges the normative character of public criticism, however, he replaces the ontological commitment with a reflexive awareness of the politics of publicly expressed criticism. The ‘normative logic of emancipation’ is, in other words, a political rather than a purely normative one. What happens, if the ‘force of the better argument’ does not trump an incrusted set of routinised beliefs? Much like Patomäki, Jürgen Habermas himself has addressed this problem as a strategic, political one. Acknowledging the political nature of public criticism, however, leads away from the ontological quest for certainty and into a problematisation of the potentially technocratic and expertocratic nature of public interventions, which starts off with the self-assertive move of establishing a position of epistemic authority. This becomes particularly obvious in Habermas's more recent reflections of the nexus of theory and praxis.

Where communicative action runs into a ‘dead-end’, he contends, actors may resort to ‘strategic games where necessary’.Footnote ²⁴ Strategically pushing for the enhancement of argumentative freedoms is thus justified as a genuinely political act aiming at the removal of practical delimitations of the universe of reasons rather than the establishment of an epistemic authority capable of steering the argumentative interplay into a particular direction. Despite a commitment to universality and truth, which self-consciously irritates those acquainted to postmodern parlance, Habermas is astutely aware of the danger of submerging political processes under putatively higher concerns for morality or truth. As the factual pluralism of Weltanschauungen has become legitimate, a knowledgeable, yet unilateral proclamation of what is to be done becomes untenable. The authoritative identification of false consciousness inevitably entails technocratic and expertocratic overtones of adjudicating conflicts from a position, which is in the unique possession of knowledge as to what is right and wrong. If emancipatory projects of social transformation are introduced from such an angle, Habermas argues, ‘the pretensions of a criticizing Reason thus become the very target of criticism’. In the course of such self-criticism ‘it comes to consciousness that the interest in governing/ruling over a contingent history of society, which is exempt from our command, has replaced the reasonable impulse to emancipate from the repeating pressures of a suppressed history of suffering.’Footnote ²⁵ The tacit replacement, Habermas adds, confounds the ‘pluralist constitution of a praxis’ of ‘societalized individuals’ with the self-asserting steering efforts of an allegedly preconstituted collectivity. The ineradicable possibility of nay-saying is the constitutive feature of a society which integrates itself through communication. Independent of how a claim is substantiated, scientifically or not, and, even more importantly, independent of the position from where it is uttered, it may simply fail in the collision of arguments. Attempting to overwrite the potential of resistance nested in the praxis of everyday communication by asserting a position of epistemic authority would thus replace such an intersubjective praxis with the image of technological steering interventions from the outside. Scientific knowledge production thus needs to undergo a painful process of disenchantment in situating itself firmly within a democratic process – otherwise it carries on with technocratic pretensions even if they run diametrically against better normative intentions. Following Adorno, Habermas thus identifies ‘the totalitarian core of Reason, which has become but instrumental’ in any attempt to give in to ‘philosophy's post-Hegelian urge to become practical’.Footnote ²⁶ Obviously, the disarmament and disenchantment of practical relevance does not repel intellectual activity into the merely self-referential fuss of the ivory tower.Footnote ²⁷ On the contrary, it challenges philosophers and social scientists to pragmatically explore ways of informing public discourse without establishing a priori a quasi-Archimedian position. This is, no doubt, difficult, especially given the problem of the ‘public's flip-flop thinking about science. For many science is about certainty and scientists are seen as Gods bringing down the sacred truths from the mountains of Nature. When disillusioned with this view the public switch to the alternative which is to see science as a political conspiracy where scientific results are fraudulently produced cynically to satisfy political masters.’Footnote ²⁸ Against such a background, holding on to strong aspirations of certainty becomes all the more problematic, for it merely tends to reinforce uncritically obedient predispositions in the audience. Rather than suggesting a fictitious point from nowhere, a pragmatic strategy of creatively exploring less hierarchical forms of public communication would thus have to turn relative speaker positions into an explicit focus of reflection. This does not necessarily imply the adoption of a partisan perspective. On the contrary, the public weight of intellectual intervention might then very well depend on the degree to which arguments are both crafted into rhetorical punch-lines and carefully balanced. However, impressions of intellectual independence or even uncorrupted impartiality can only be gained in the process of argumentative contestation; they cannot be established as a priori conditions of public communication if the principle of a horizontal encounter of democratic subjects is not to be violated.

It is, of course, both easy and tempting to mobilise a hands-on empiricism against such abstract considerations. Are there not brute facts that cannot be challenged on any serious scholarly ground? And do such facts not have material consequences that are by no means infinitely malleable in processes of ‘social construction’. To be sure, the ontological interests of critical realists typically focus on more abstract entities such as complex, unobservable social structures than pedestrian facts allegedly lying around on the surface. However, this does not stop Colin Wight from attacking Friedrich Kratochwil's pragmatic swan song on the epistemological projectFootnote ²⁹ as politically irresponsible precisely because it gives up on a strictly fact-based form of criticism. Kratochwil's linguistic constructionism, Wight holds, renders him incapable of unmasking the US government's claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as being untrue. On Wight's account, Kratochwil forfeits the opportunity of ‘pointing to the world and saying “look there really aren't any weapons there”.’Footnote ³⁰ Certainly, Wight is not an empiricist, and this particular argument is evidently not free of polemical intent. Yet, it helpfully illustrates what is at stake in the controversy. However, Wight's commitment to fallibilism, while almost commonsensical at first sight, escalates into a quest for ontological certainty, in which the yardstick of truth ends up being framed in almost classically empiricist framework of real-world reference. The commitment to ontological certainty gains its thrust only in combination with the possibility of adjudicating contending validity claims on a basis other than peer criticism. Wight's insistence on fallibilism does not presuppose heavier forms of ontological foundationalism, however it implicitly leads towards them. He considers the insistence on ontological fixity at some point, be it the factual absence of weapons of mass destruction or some deeper, unobservable dynamic operating beneath, as a necessary precondition for meaningful scholarship and effective criticism. Kratochwil, on the contrary, considers the insistence on such fixities detrimental to both pursuits. Moving beyond an ontological framework, he contends, is a necessary first step in order to be able to pose the question of how we ought to conduct inquiry into international politics.Footnote ³¹

The example of non-existent weapons of mass destruction is, incidentally, more intricate than it seems to be at the first glance, because any observation that results in the claim that there are no such weapons needs to attribute a positive epistemic value to the negative experience of not seeing anything. The underlying point, however, can be made irrespective of such complexities. Take for example, Charles Tilly's discussion of the height of fourteen-year-old entrants to military service in early nineteenth century England in his Durable Inequality. A comparison of entrants to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, who ‘represent the healthier portion of the aristocracy and gentry’ on the one hand, and recruits for naval service from London, ‘who represent the healthier portion of the city's jobless poor’ reveals a difference in height of around 10 inches. While aristocracy averaged around 5 feet 1 inch, the naval recruits were, on average, only 4 feet 3 inches tall. We can easily imagine, as Tilly points out, ‘how aristocratic officers glowering down half a foot or more at their plebeian soldiers. Such an image vivifies the phrases “high and mighty”, “haughty”, and “look down on someone”.’ Tilly goes on to discuss observations of similar effects among non-native speakers of English in New York, or in ‘egalitarian Sweden’ where the weight of newborns of ‘less-educated women’ was found to be significantly lower. Notably, even in the case of male/female height differences, explanations in terms of genetic disposition fall short of providing a complete picture.Footnote ³² Obviously, what is of interest here is not the sheer facticity of height differences but rather the way in which they are linked to durable patterns of inequality. What is of interest are, in other words, the underlying causal mechanisms producing these observable results. The observation of height differences and even their association with a particular set of social categories are unlikely to stir up any controversy. Obviously, both can be subjected to methodical criticism. Measurements may be fraudulent, links between particular categories and measurement results may be spurious, but all of this is likely to be settled in a relatively straightforward manner; if controversies ensue they are unlikely to revolve around any of the particular concerns of critical realists. What is it, then, that critical realists bring to the analysis of such observations? They are likely to agree with pragmatists, relationalists, and interpretivists of various kinds that the observations are the product of an underlying dynamic that accounts for such durable inequalities. Yet, they would probably insist that these underlying mechanisms are real not only in the sense of the pragmatic realism, which Tilly himself defended on account of their having real effects, but in a more profound ontological sense as fixed, anchoring points of reference in an externally given world. Do we need to acknowledge the ontological status of mechanisms of exclusion and inequality production in order for there to be something that can be criticised and changed? Or is any such concern with the ontological status already a step towards reifying the historically contingent figuration that can be criticised and changed only on account of its historical contingency? This is the alternative in question, even though critical realists would seem unlikely to accept it as an alternative in the first place. Why should we not be able to accept both the historical contingency and the reality of exclusionary classifications? Indeed, we may. Yet, within the ontological framework there always needs to be some point at which the exercise of historical-genetic reconstruction comes to an end; otherwise one could not ‘point to the real world’ any longer. Processualism can be acknowledged, but never ‘all the way down’, it only unfolds between ‘agents’ and ‘structures’, which are presupposed as ontologically distinct entities. From a reconstructive point of view, processual openness rather than ontological closure is a necessary precondition for change, and hence it is this very move of putting a stop to interpretive liquidification, which is considered problematic. The argument may become more transparent in an additional example, which explicitly tackles the (theological) notion of ultimate justification.

At the outset of a decidedly anti-ontological contribution to legal theory, Gunther Teubner recalls the story of Rabbi Eliezer, a highly respected scholar, who disagreed with a group of rabbis over the question of whether or not an oven, which had become impure, could subsequently be repurified. Despite Eliezer's skilfully presented plea as to why this should be possible, the others disagreed. In support of his position Eliezer enlisted the help of a nearby carob tree, by predicting that it should eventually move away from its place in case his plea was correct. And so it did. However, tree movement was not considered acceptable evidence by his colleagues. Eliezer amplified his efforts by correctly forecasting that the stream of water be reversed. And so it did. Again, however, the evidence was discarded. Unsurprisingly, then, Eliezer's prediction that the walls of the House of Study should bend inward in support of his position, which again did materialise, failed to persuade the sceptics as well. In an ultimate attempt to win the argument, Eliezer foresaw that a voice from heaven would rise and speak out in support of his position. Again, he was correct. Yet, again, this did not tip the balance, as the rabbis invoked the applicability of majority rule as specified in the Torah. And God was laughing and saying, ‘My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me.’Footnote ³³

From the point of view of Critical Realism this would seem scandalous, because any firm basis of scientifically informed criticism evaporates. From a pragmatist, reconstructive point of view it is precisely the contingency built into processes of argumentative contestation, which preserves the very possibility of social transformation. Ontological commitments of any sort inevitably inhibit the process of argumentative contestation because they introduce hierarchical relations, which are considered to remain external to the process of giving and taking reasons, which constitutes argumentative practice in the first place.

Ontological anxiety and beyond

Apparently, at the core of Critical Realist interventions lies an ontological anxiety, which runs parallel to what Alexander Wendt has observed as ‘epistemological anxiety’ among positivists.Footnote ³⁴ While positivists are afraid of losing secure means of accessing the world, critical realists are afraid of losing the world altogether if we give in to the epistemological predilections of both positivists and post-positivists. Hence, contrary to the laudable ambition formulated by Patomäki and Wight, Critical Realism does not succeed in overcoming the ‘problem-field’ shared by positivists and post-positivists. By reaffirming the distinction between ontology and epistemology and ‘siding with’ the former, critical realists merely reproduce the ‘problem-field’ of ontological and epistemological anxiety, which is at the centre of the post-/positivist divide. Where positivists seek certainty through method, critical realists seek certainty through ontological commitment. Post-positivists, too, by negatively inverting claims to certainty on either methodical or ontological grounds tend to remain oriented towards the problem of certainty. After all, both the statement that the world really does exist, and the statement that the world really doesn't exist are caught up in the same ‘old-European’ semantics of ontology.Footnote ³⁵

The problem of uncertainty stands at the centre of Dewey's Quest for Certainty – and, one may add with Dewey – squarely in the way of a more problem-driven approach. Drawing hard and fast lines between knowledge and action, theory and praxis, subject and object, Dewey maintains, is a tribute to obsolescent modes of thought, which predate the experimental and fallibilistic self-understanding of systematic inquiry. It is only through the artificial separation between knowing and the knownFootnote ³⁶ that such dichotomies can be retained. Disposing of them does not mean to give up on ‘the world’, let alone a fallibilistic understanding of inquiry. On the contrary, Dewey insists that the generation of knowledge occurs only in response to the practical problems we are confronted with in everyday life. Taking such everyday problems as a starting point of inquiry, however, is only hindered by artificial speculations about correspondence or disjunction between knowing and the known. Dewey pinpoints the problem in an imaginary dialogue between a pragmatist philosopher and a student, who has grown frustrated with the teachings of his former instructor, a character named Professor Purus Intellectus. The problem of correspondence, Dewey's alter ego explicates, dissolves in the practice of co-respondence to a problem we are confronted with.Footnote ³⁷ Hence, the focus shifts from the question whether or not we are approximating an externally given reality, or whether or not such an externally given reality comes along with some inherent meaning to the interpretive practices by means of which the observation of the problem is being processed. What are the pragmatic consequences of a particular response? Which alternative possibilities are thereby excluded? How is a particular response justified vis-à-vis such a range of alternatives? None of these questions can be meaningfully answered by invoking a plane of existence uncontaminated by the act of knowing. But how are we to ascertain knowledge if it cannot be separated from our acts knowing? Dewey ironically addresses this problem of ontological anxiety in the concluding exchange between teacher and pupil, which begins with a moment of serendipity on the side of the student, thus reverting the question-response scheme of the preceding dialogue.

The ‘personal factor’ is, of course, not to be taken in an individualistic, mentalist sense. Rather the pragmatic act of knowing, of co-respondence operates at the social level, that is, through communication. In this respect, a surprisingly similar line of argument is proposed by modern systems theorist Niklas Luhmann.Footnote ³⁹ Luhmann radicalises Dewey's diagnosis of a disjuncture between absolutist conceptions of knowledge and contemporary practices of knowing by linking absolutist logic not only to a mode of philosophical inquiry, which has become historical, but also to a distinctly pre-modern form of social organisation.Footnote ⁴⁰ ‘Ontology’ becomes of systematic interest throughout the seventeenth century, in response to problems of uncertainty arising on account of the disjuncture between a traditional semantics and emerging forms of a critical, experimental knowledge generation. The new concept attempts to coherently sum up a set of interpretive routines that had previously been considered unproblematic. With the distinction between being and non-being it invokes the perspective of a hierarchical centre capable of authoritatively adjudicating which description of the world is the right one. From such a position of authority, epistéme can be prioritised over doxa, much like the nobility is prioritised over the plebs, or the city over its rural surroundings. Given such stable hierarchicalisations of stratificatory or centre/periphery differentiation, it suffices to represent the world as univalent. Both the temporal problem of origin and the contemplation of alternative schemes of observation remains excluded. Comfortably, from within the ontological scheme of observation, which operates through the distinction between being and non-being, whatever is excluded from the realm of being is ‘nothing’. If ‘nothing’ is excluded, however, one can hardly establish the need to care. The collision of multiple schemes of observation, which is characteristic of complex forms of functional differentiation and the multiplicity of hierarchicalisations that come along with it have no place in the ontological worldview, for it operates precisely as a semantic defence mechanism against the perils of a loss of the kinds of absolute certainty that used to appear available in the light of more clear-cut stratifications. In response one cannot simply ‘strive to shove the orphaned throne of the subject on to the object, where it would be nothing but a juggernaut’.Footnote ⁴¹

The distinctions between object and subject, ontology and epistemology, accompanied by the question of which side ought to be prioritised, which have served as the key point of reference in IR's excursions into the realm of meta-theory, thus merely reflect the historical experience of a mode of social organisation characterised by a single, central, and unchallenged relation of hierarchy. They have, pragmatically speaking, become unhelpful and can safely be disposed of.