Research On Positivism International Theory In The Vision Threshold Of International Relations Thoughts History

Martin Wight asked a question in a 1960:Is there a theory dedicated to international relations if we exclude contemplation of human destiny? The answer he gave at that time was no,because most of the discussions about international relations at that time were spread from the fields of philosophy,political philosophy and international law,and were only some related discussions when touching the field of international relations.Therefore,Martin Wight believes that international relations is just the edge of the above-mentioned knowledge.Looking back at this question today,it seems that the answer has changed.International relations has become an independent discipline with its own disciplinary theory.The question then becomes:As a discipline,how can the disciplinary theory of international relations be isolated from other fields of study? What are the functions and characteristics of the theoretical techniques used in its theory? The answers to these questions are not only an analysis and summary of the current status of theoretical development,but also involve some principles and directions of theoretical development.This article believes that positivism is a possible answer to these questions.Positivism is a philosophical concept that originated in the mid-19 th century and was completed in the 20 th century.The discussion of positivism in international relations theoretical research appeared relatively recently in the second half of the 20 th century.This time difference is different from the development of the discipline of philosophy itself.It is related to the purity of theory,so most of the existing research is based on international relations theory through philosophical theory,in order to make a judgment about the Positivism theoretical thoughts.However,a predetermined condition brought about by such a research idea is that the scale for measuring gains and losses can only be provided by philosophical positivism alone,and the more valuable part of human theoretical thinking forms is the link between successive theoretical thinking forms.After all,one of the greatest theoretical achievements of speculative philosophy is to identify philosophy as the history of philosophy.Therefore,whether the historical role of the discipline itself can be discovered through the history of disciplinary thought has become a potentially valuable research.This is the direct reason why this study rediscovers and narrates the hidden vein of Positivism in the development history of international relations theory since the 20 th century.However,it must be admitted that the history of theoretical development in this period is not all related to Positivism,because the history of theoretical development is a faithful record of the development of theory,and the history of ideas is a principled exploration of the evolution of theoretical ideas.Therefore,in the research object and scope in this study has been excluded to a certain extent through the theoretical stance of the discipline.A series of entity theories that hold a non-affirmative attitude towards the rationality of the discipline of International Relations,including generalized constructivism,constitute the narrative thread of positivism.The important part also participates in the introduction of a series of theoretical issues,but the substantive theories developed from a non-disciplinary standpoint are not within the scope of the doublereading part.In terms of research content,the thinking approach adopted in this study is to illuminate the history of the development of philosophical theory through the narrative established by the history of thought,and to use the Positivist narrative of the history of international relations thought to focus on the subject independence,genaral law of knowledge cateorizing,and the predicament of theory.These three themes of general principles of classification and dilemmas in the development of disciplinary theories are used as clues to find relevant philosophical theories on solving the ontological issues of speculative philosophy,exploring the overall development laws of scientific theories,and elucidating the relationship between theory and practice,and combine the first two in structural realism.Verify it with the text of liberal institutionalist international relations theory,and apply the latter to further understand and evaluate the specific theoretical techniques verified by the former.These three clues respectively correspond to logical positivism,scientific theory in modern British and American analytical philosophy.Philosophy and pragmatism are three successive philosophical theories.The main function and purpose of the double-reading method is to verify the questions captured in the aforementioned intellectual history narrative and the answers given by the philosophical principles in theoretical texts.By bringing questions into theoretical texts and looking for specific theoretical techniques used by theoretical texts to deal with these issues,we discovered the theoretical techniques of logical positivism used by liberal institutionalism and structural realism in dealing with the issue of disciplinary theoretical positions.Among them,liberal institutionalism has successfully connected with the practical dimension to a certain extent through the utilitarian teleology of the empirical reality of international relations,and established a utilitarian value judgment based on the theoretical stance of the discipline;structural realism has used the explanatory power as the scientific value judgment.Philosophy has successfully constructed descriptive concepts with a disciplinary theoretical stance.These two findings can expose the dimensions of practical needs behind the theory of international relations and the conceptual needs of theoretical development,and at the same time provide reference for the continued development of China’s international relations theory.From the overall conclusion,it is necessary to regard positivism as a process of theoretical development.In this link,the pragmatic stance of philosophy has the potential ability to organize and arrange issues related to positivism.Pragmatist knowledge-action monism can use the practice of China’s diplomacy in the new era as an important basis for theoretical development and construction: liberal institutionalism’s establishment of value judgments on the legitimacy of international mechanisms under the leadership of the United States through formal rationality is based on this;at the same time,it can also use The logical positivist theoretical techniques used in the disciplinary theoretical stance are identified as an important means of disciplinary concept construction: the core concept of structure of structural realism neither borrows from other disciplinary theories nor adheres to any social science public issues-it was invented for it The most direct reason for the knowledge of international relations.By comparing the experience of other similar disciplines in dealing with the theoretical thinking of positivism,it can be seen that frankly admitting that the position of the real dimension needs to be transformed and actively creating different construction methods at the conceptual level is indeed conducive to the discipline brought by positivism.Breaking through the theoretical dilemma without completely destroying the scientific empirical nature of the theory.In fact,a series of emerging disciplines of the same kind have begun to appear and are devoted to this.Regional and country studies provide a differentiated perspective of empirical materials for theoretical construction.National security studies have emerged that are different from Western political science,sociology and history.The construction of the concept of country(guojia)is similar to the core concept of structural realism.These new attempts can be regarded as the direction of further development of Chinese international relations theory.