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Bewitching the world: remarks on ‘Inter-disciplinarity, the epistemological ideal of incontrovertible foundations, and the problem of praxis’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2020

Nicholas Onuf*
Affiliation:
Emeritus, Department of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

Kratochwil's magnificent The Status of Law in World Society's first meditation, a philosophical discursus masquerading as a meditation about meditation, addresses how International Law and International Relations deal so differently with their common concerns. Kratochwil treats these concerns with his usual cogency. Yet, critical links are missing. How do we get from speaking as a normative practice to the status of law in today's world? How does language (even more than law) go from an ‘agency-related notion’ to ‘a pervasive force penetrating all social relations’? The bewitchment of the world through language is ontology's greatest mystery, worthy of endless meditation.

Type
Symposium: In the Midst of Theory and Practice: Edited by Hannes Peltonen and Knut Traisbach
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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