Introduction

Abstract

How would Kant or Weber respond to contemporary debates about epistemology? What would Hume say to critiques of his ‘constant conjunction’ and recent approaches that try to finesse causation? What would Hobbes, Machiavelli, Clausewitz and Morgenthau think about the quasi-integration of Europe or the rise of China, or Rousseau, Adam Smith and Norman Angell about globalization? How would any of these thinkers respond to positivism, constructivism, postmodernism, rationa l models and feminism? Could Plato and Aristotle have interesting conversations with Durkheim, Foucault or Bourdieu? Anyone who has had to struggle seriously with the work of dead theorists will have had moments when they would have liked to talk to these thinkers. Perhaps some have given into these musings and conducted imaginary conversations in the solitude of their offices or while on a walk through the woods. To write perceptively about these theorists we need to get inside their minds, and what better way than through imagined dialogues?