Abstract
Lucian Ashworth invites us to expand the notion of disciplinary history in order to analyze the production of International Relations (IR) thinkers and IR communities as arguments in context (and, one should add, in contexts not defined by arbitrary disciplinary boundaries). Surveying how the history of political thought has been renewed by the Cambridge School, the analytical tradition (Mark Bevir), and the history of science (Peter Galison), Ashworth argues that a proper historical approach to the development of our international concepts does not mean that one is stuck with mere “narratives” that are equally valid. “The role of historical methods,” he suggests, is “to help us judge these narratives on their own merits” and, one would add, critically discriminate among them.
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Notes
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Lemarck saw evolution as leading to a fixed end. His concept of evolution entered social science via the work of Herbert Spencer. For Darwin, however, evolution had no fixed end, and represented merely a population’s adjustment to current conditions.
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Ashworth, L.M. (2019). How Should We Approach the History of International Thought?. In: Schmidt, B., Guilhot, N. (eds) Historiographical Investigations in International Relations. The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78036-8_4
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