Radical Phenomenology, Ontology, and International Political Theory

Abstract

This article is contribution to investigation of possible methodologies available to study of global politics. Conceived as rejoinder to those who demand not merely positivist but rigorous research, it is motivated by belief that reflection can be true to itself only when made concrete by acute attention to specificity of worldly phenomena. To this end, I outline what might be broadly referred to as method. Phenomenology's demand that one attend to the things offers, I suggest, an opportunity critically to examine commitment to theoretical constructs that remain wedded to ontological perspectives that resist ever-changing of social interaction. (1) In particular, I examine strand of pioneered by Martin Heidegger, who, in 1920s, rearticulated it as method for ontological examination. Following philosophical exposition of Heidegger's reformulation of phenomenology, article subsequently juxtaposes Thomas Hobbes's account of subjectivity as self-interested and concerned with its own survival with account of selfhood offered by Heidegger's phenomenological investigations into of human existence. The attunement to facticity witnessed in Heidegger's radical deconstruction (Abbau) of modern subjectivity, I argue, has profound ramifications for theorizing social relations in that it contests very possibility of an international social and political theory based on self-interested, autonomous subject, examples of which still have continued salience in IR. (2) Indeed, this article takes as its point of departure conviction that understanding of ourselves under sign of modern subjectivity produces set of assumptions about us and others based on a mindset of valuation, disposal, management, and objectification in our care for our lives--a mindset whose overpowering force hems us in throughout our everyday world, confuses freedom with condition of possibility for certain types of subjectivity, and gives priority to correctness and measurement in matters of truth. (3) The article suggests, instead, need to develop, through consideration of contributions of radical phenomenology, theoretical sensibility that is attuned to existence of self constituted by otherness, self that is explicitly aware of its heteronomous constitution so as to promote an international political theory that has at its center, not modern subject, but rather an understanding of coexistence as proximal fact of human life. Thinking About Phenomenology A number of twentieth-century thinkers began their philosophical journeys in general parameters of as first articulated in beginning of century by Edmund Husserl. It has formed point of departure for many subsequent thinkers such as Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer; Alfred Schutz, Maurice Merleu-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Werner Marx. However, it would be quite misleading to suggest that general definition of can be easily provided, since most of aforementioned thinkers who worked within have reconfigured its assumptions to fit their specific concerns and subject matter. (4) Nevertheless, even in such diverse field of enquiry, certain things are accepted as means and tasks of inquiry. According to John Sallis, for example, is, in first instance, methodological demand, that one attend constantly and faithfully to things themselves. It is demand that philosophical thought proceed by attending to things as they themselves show themselves rather than in terms of presupposed opinions, theories, or concepts. (5) As philosophical approach or, more narrowly, method, phenomenology is thus an appeal to things themselves. …