著者

西村 邦行

出版者

JAPAN ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.2010, no.160, pp.160_34-47, 2012

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Political scientists have usually considered E. H. Carr as a pioneer of the academic field of International Relations (IR). Given this understanding is tenable, in which historical context did he establish a new discipline?<br>In the early twentieth century, Max Weber discerned in the emergence of bureaucratic institutions an idiosyncratic phase of modern instrumental rationalism. The currently acknowledged form of academic divisions was at best contestable when Carr wrote his monumental <i>The Twenty Years' Crisis</i> (1939). Indeed, Carr was a multifaceted scholar: sometimes, he was an advocate of political realism; other times, he was the author of the controversial historical studies on Soviet Russia; yet other times, he was a biographer of nineteenth century thinkers. It is a grave mistake to recognize Carr exclusively either as historian, political scientist, or biographer.<br>The chief objective of the present article is to situate Carr in the context of the emergence of professional intellectuals, and thus clarify the meaning of the popular understanding that he was one of the pioneering figures of IR. This author focuses on his early works: <i>Dostoevsky</i> (1931), <i>The Romantic Exiles</i> (1933), <i>Karl Marx</i> (1934) and <i>Michael Bakunin</i> (1937). Compared with his texts in the two decades around the middle of the twentieth century, these works have not occasioned much scholarly interest among IR researchers. One of the main reasons of this ignorance is probably their apparent irrelevance to the study of international relations. As I see it, however, Carr's inquiry into international relations was a continuation of his project he advanced in his biographical works. Through his exposure to the untraditional thoughts of nineteenth-century Russian (and Russia-related) intellectuals, Carr obtained a historical view that the modern western world was in radical transformation. On the other hand, Carr discerned various European elements within the apparently unfamiliar Russian thoughts. Carr's project was ultimately a remedial self-critique of Europe. Carr's search for alternative cultural value ended up reattaching him to his familiar liberal world.<br>By suggesting these points, the present article aims to add another contribution to the recent reinterpretations of Carr. It also directs our attentions to the issue of contexts in general for further advancing our knowledge about the history of international studies as well as Carr's relevance to the contemporary world.