Power Politics and the Civitas Terrena. The Augustinian Sources of Anglo-American Thought in International Relations

Epp, Roger Ivan (1990) Power Politics and the Civitas Terrena. The Augustinian Sources of Anglo-American Thought in International Relations. PhD.

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Abstract

This dissertation delineates an Augustinian tradition or language of human affairs applied to international politics in the postwar era; accounts for its brief ascendancy in Britain and the United States; and, assesses its impact on an aspirant academie specialization and a first generation of self-conscious realists.The princlpal figures of interest are Reinhold Niebuhr, Herhert Butterfield, and Martin Wlght, whose centrality in the interpretation of international relations has been broadly acknowledged, but whose theologically-rooted assumptions have not been explored. Wight's work, in particular,can be illuminated in terms of the ether two and the categories into Which they and ethers breathed life in mid-century.This thesis is an exercise in the history of ideas, and of the study of international relations, in the spirit of a recent admonition that the field has lacked awareness of its history, and of the intellectual currents that have shaped it.One casualty of a contextually-sensitive reading of the postwar literature is the idea of a monollthlc reallsm and, in turn, the crude self-narrative of a series of so-called Great Debates, beginning wlth "realism" versus "idealism."

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Language:	English
Publisher:	University of Groningen
Place of Publication:	Ontario
Date of graduation:	1 June 1990
Status:	Published
Date Deposited:	02 Jun 2020 10:42
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2020 10:42
URI:	https://ebooks.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/35

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