Positivism, idealism and imperial power

The review of book "Ethics, Liberalism and Reaalism in Interational Relations" by Mark D. Gismondi

POSITIVISM, IDEALISM, AND IMPERIAL POWER
The shift from harmony to coercion in liberal thought
Hume's analysis in Treatise of Human Nature, said that while reason may be understood as a kind of useful fiction, it is unlikely to be a very satisfactory guide for understanding moral judgments. Hume also recognizes that there is a selfish side to human behavior and for this reason believes that the range of this convergence will be severely limited.For one, Hume's theory relies upon what Elazar refers to as natural liberty; it is precisely in pursuing that which makes us happy that the greater good is achieved. Hence, Hume's theory also represents a profound depoliticization of a conception of justice, which lies at the nexus between ethics and politics.
Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and the integration of ascendinginterests
Smith's view is often misunderstood as an early version of the Washington Consensus neoliberal model. In fact, Smith is quite concerned with social welfare and is not as enthusiastic about the free reign of markets and control of the polity by the bourgeoisie as he is often thought to be. Smith said in his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nationswas outcome:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker
that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and
never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
At the international level, Smith famously argues that the pursuit of interests ought to lead to peaceful relations between states. In his original question regarding the development of mercantilism, he concludes that it is irrational state policies that prevent the development of the natural peaceful order.
In Bentham's view, however, aviable theory of ethics had to rest upon a more parsimonious foundation than that provided by his predecessors.That foundation, of course, is his well-known version of utility, a term he continued to refine throughout his life, but which was generally understood as the greatest good for the greatest number of people.In his "Plan for a universal peace" (1789), prescriptions that look strikingly similar to modern liberal solutions to international problems begin to appear. Bentham makes a powerful economic argument against "foreign dependencies". in Proposition XIII, He writes:
By these means the mass of the people, the part most exposed to be led
away by prejudices, would not be sooner apprized of the measure, than
they would feel the relief it brought them. They would see it was for
their advantage it was calculated, and that it could not be calculated for
any other purpose.
Bentham's belief that enlightened legislators would be able to escape the same prejudices that plagued more ordinary inhabitants of different states reflects the importance of education common to liberal theories in general.
John Stuart Mill: the utility of empire
Mill refined Bentham's theory, First, he introduced the well-known principle of non-restriction.Second, he asserts that there can be no unitary ends defined publicly in a liberal polity, taking the final step in emptying utilitarianism of its claim to provide a rational justification of political values.
Mill argues about the effects of majoritarian politics and mass society on enlightened understanding of intereststhat that the development of virtue in individuals is necessary for the health of the community, and that the state thus has a role in promoting virtue, primarily through education.
From contract to community: T. H. Green and British Idealism
Green seeks to maintain a link between rights and individual interest:
At the same time that Green rejects the egoism and atomism of rights, he does not divorce the institution of rights either from the individual or from "interest." Rather ... he defends the mutuality of rights: a system of rights both presupposes and gives effect to the social life of mutually dependent and mutually interested individuals.
Alberto De Sanctis has argued that Green relies heavily on Puritan political theory, which serves as a means of integrating German idealism into a British context. Puritanism, he argues, allows Green to find a via media between the epistemic extremes of English empiricism and German idealism.
As an intellectual descendant of T. H. Green and the British Idealist movement,52 his thoughts and actions are illustrative of why Elazar's concerns about organic modes of conceptualizing the body politic, which were prominent in British Idealism, should be taken seriously.
Alfred Zimmern and coercive idealism
Carr argues that liberalism's fatal flaw is its belief in the existence of a harmony of interests among states and the political naïvety engendered by this belief. Yet Carr points to Zimmern's thought (and Green's) as an example of this problem. "If people or nations behave badly, it must be, as Buckle and Sir Norman Angell and Professor Zimmern think, because they are unintellectual or short-sighted and muddleheaded."
For Zimmern, colonial populations are not prepared for self-rule; they are in need of a significant amount of education before they can be trusted to govern themselves. Morefield argues that liberals like Zimmern overestimated the consistency between global interests and British interests, a belief rooted in their organic view of politics.
Anticipating concerns of his audience that his proposal for a union of European states is based on an organic model is too utopian, he states:
This proposal may startle you.... But before you dismiss it as Utopian
or unrealistic ... I would beg you to consider it carefully in light of the
organic development ... which has already taken place in the North
Atlantic area and to ask yourselves how we can ... secure either the
thoroughly effective organization or unfettered leadership which are
indispensable if we are to overcome the present danger and enable our
civilization to survive.
From substance to procedure in international law
Wilson supports two contradictory objectives: self-determination (which implies non-intervention) and the presence of enforceable public international law. As Morgenthau observed, the contradiction between the ideals of selfdetermination and the outcomes of the Treaty of Versailles was another reason liberals were unable to stand up to Hitler's pre-war annexations ofterritories with large German contingents.
The Mandate system illustrates the consequences of "education" as understood by liberals of this period. Their purpose was to bring about the improvement of these peoples and prepare them for self-determination, though that latter goal would remain temporally vague. The liberal component of the Enlightenment project collapsed at this point as its epistemology could not support what was arguably its most important objective: to find a stable ethical foundation for rights, rights which were central to a liberal theory of justice.
Weber argues that empirically, the rationalizing project of the Enlightenment leads not to the enlightenment of the masses but rather the stultification of modern life, disenchantment, and the iron cage. Like Nietzsche, Weber believes that happiness is the creation of the bourgeois last men, and there can be little doubt as to who he has in mind.
After Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those "last men" who
"invented happiness," I may leave aside altogether the naive optimism
in which science – that is, the technique of mastering life which rests
upon science – has been celebrated as a way to happiness. Who believes
in this? – aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial
offices.