EIR MIDTERM

Hutchings

Global Ethics

Chapter 2, “Rationalist Ethical Theories,” pp. 25–46, 3 “Alternatives to Ethical Rationalism,”

• Consequentialism/Utilitarianism

• Social Contract

• Deontology/Kant

• Virtue Ethics

• Care

Gilligan

In a Different Voice

AMY&JAKE

• Not “men reason, women care”

• Instead: a moral framework doesn’t only give answers but it POST FACTO DEFINES THE QUESTION

Schwartz & Sharpe

Practical Wisdom

• Telos (purpose) matters in JUDGEMENT, balancing act

• Rules don’t apply themselves and can’t be all of it, common law, judge as lawmakers\

• Yay IRL experience

• Authority should be from the actors not the rules alone

Mills

Ideal Theory as Ideology

• We play on a slanted field/reference frames

• We need a good IRL basis for our theories

• Power drives everything

• Abstraction is not the same as idealization

• Idealization: we dont live in an ideal world | abstraction, we need a better one

Khader

Decolonizing Universalism: A Transnational Feminist Ethic

• Anti imperialist normativity dilemma

• Fake choice between universal feminist critiques but impose western values, and losing ability to draw attention to gender justice

• How to apply judgements across global difference, pluraverse, cultural relativism, multiple epistemologies and ontologies

Week 2 How Should We Judge? Moral Theory, Political Judgment, and Global Difference

• Judgements are reasons, defensibity, revisibility, and its a messy world but that shows ethics are needed, not proof that its undoable

• We need to ground our ethics in what is, and are our judgements actually reflecting reality of a situation

Thucydides

The Melian Dialogue

Lebow

The Tragic Vision of Politics

• Athens in greater context could be a warning against hubris and power for the sake of power alone (a radical reading)

• Identity and emotion can drive parties to war just as much as informed rational decisions, sometimes in place of it 

• What disappears from the world when we talk about the conflict as a shift in balance and power

Carr

1,5,6,9 Twenty Years Crisis

• Does realism reject morality?? We need both is and ought

• “Harmony of interests” is the mighty imposing their will, fallacy of greater good

Morgenthau

Twilight of International Morality

• Democratization and nationalism have led to the death of IR morality, death of old IR order

• Reality can restrain power but if you fight for all you believe to be “right” you will do great harm

Walzer

Just and Unjust Wars - Against Realism **need to read

• Realists aren't right that IR is devoid of morals, killing requires justification, morals are foundational in IR

Williams

Realism and Moralism in Political Theory

• Authority and Legitimacy does not COME from moral principles (top down). But the claim to authority can be delegitimized on ethical grounds (revolt vibes)

• LEG BLD (yay) MP (boo moralism)

Franceschet*

A Realist Ethos of Resistance in Global Politics

• Shift from the rights of the ruler to the rights of those ruled, resistance

• Being able to dominate doesnt mean you have a right and people can resist

• A realist foundation of legitimacy where power is not immune from moral constraints

Week 3 Politics Against Morality? Realism, Necessity, Prudence, and Tragedy

Final Thoughts:

• With power, constraint, & consequence, is there room for morality? Is power immune from moral constraint

• When does necessity represent a real constraint or a cover-up justification for a choice?

Beitz

Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice

Individual units, global scale, no prescribed enforcement. Widen the circle of justification but not going so far as to disrespect the state and its borders

Rawls

The Law of Peoples

• 2 steps for IR justice

• Conditions: a Well-Ordered State. And respectful cooperation… decency comes before negotiation

• 7 necessary principles

  • Critique: he doesnt say what norms should regulate liberal conduct with outlaw states

  • Are we just spreading Western liberal norms at the cost of war and destabilization?

Getachew*

Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination

• Domination continues post empire world order

• Anticolonialists took the principle of sovereingty and made a right to create a more equalitarian world order

• Unfinished global south worldmaking project, a function of sovereignty, a radical freedom to start worldmaking

• Shares with mercier the imagination but ass opposed to mercier it plays within the terms

Clavé-Mercier

Indigenous Political Theory, Metaphysical Revolt, and the Decolonial Rearticulation of Political Ordering

• What is possible with sovereignty

• Paradigm shift and reject the terms

• Ontology is non western interrelational and excluded in IR order and ontology foundations

Fabry

Recognizing States: International Society and the Establishment of New States Since 1776

Who is entitled to state, not state is de-facto. Instead state is to be recognized on world order  with colonial ties

UNDHR
UNDRIP

UNGAR

Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

WK 4 pt 1

Power constrains political possibility, but it does not settle either prudence or justification. Melos made that especially clear --- the Athenians may be right about the imbalance of power and the dangers of Melian hope without thereby being right that Athens is entitled to demand submission.

Wk 4 part 2

• The wider Thucydidean story complicates the idea that Athens simply represents clear-eyed realism. At Melos, Athens lectures the Melians about the perils of hope and miscalculation; the subsequent Sicilian expedition exposes Athens itself to overconfidence, inadequate knowledge, and overreach. Lebow’s tragic reading is therefore not about inevitability, but about actors helping to produce the disasters they are trying to avoid.

wk 4 pt 3

• Carr, Morgenthau, and Williams all complicate the idea that realism means “morality does not matter.” Carr shows how moral claims can conceal interests; Morgenthau insists that some moral limits can require sacrificing advantage; Williams asks whether political judgment should begin from abstract moral theory or from the problems of coercion, order, and legitimacy themselves.

wk 4 pt 4

• Necessity should begin an argument, not end one. “Necessary” always raises further questions --- necessary for what end, relative to which alternatives, produced by which prior choices, and at whose cost?

wk 4 pt 5

• Finally, realism need not always speak from the standpoint of the ruler. Franceschet asks what happens when we apply realist attention to power and domination from the perspective of those subjected to it, opening space for resistance as well as restraint.

Week 4 Who Counts, Rules, Belongs? Cosmopolitanism, Sovereignty, Worldmaking

• Taken together, I think the readings leave us with a demanding standard for political judgment: clarity about the end(s) being protected, serious attention to alternatives and uncertainty,