Introduction: Rengger’S Anti-Pelagianism: International Political Theory As Civil Conversation

Abstract

This chapter introduces the central themes across which Nicholas Rengger made his lasting contribution to the political theory of international relations and the problem of world order: his Augustine-inspired idea of an ‘anti-Pelagian imagination’ favouring a sceptical, non-utopian, anti-perfectionist response to the dilemmas of the contemporary liberal world order; his Oakeshottian argument for a pluralist ‘conversation of mankind’ that would sustain an ethos of civility in world politics; and his critical engagement with the just war tradition as an institution of civil world order.