Abstract
Tragedy makes us confront our limits: it reveals human fallibility and vulnerability, illustrates the complexities of our existence, and highlights the contradictions and ambiguities of agency. It shows us that we can initiate a course of action without being able to understand or control it — or adequately calculate its consequences. It teaches us that wisdom and self-awareness might emerge out of adversity and despair. Tragedy cautions against assuming that our own, particular conceptions of justice are universally applicable and should be enforced as such. And, it warns of the dangers that accompany power’s over-confidence and perceived invincibility. If an appreciation of tragedy thereby fosters a deeper, more sophisticated understanding of international relations — as we have maintained — how should this influence what we do? How can this understanding guide our actions as citizens or scholars, policymakers or theorists, witnesses to or students of tragedy?
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Notes
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N. J. Wheeler (2002) Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press), and R. Price (ed.) (2008) Moral Limit and Possibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) for realist, English School and constructivist engagements with questions of moral responsibility, respectively.
For an overview of both understandings of moral responsibility, specifically in the context of international relations, see T. Erskine (2008) ‘Locating Responsibility: The Problem of Moral Agency in International Relations’, in C. Reus-Smit and D. Snidal (eds) The Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 699–707
and T. Erskine (2003) ‘Making Sense of “Responsibility” in International Relations: Key Questions and Concepts’, in T. Erskine (ed.) Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1–16. In the forward-looking sense, we are using ‘responsibility’, ‘duty’, and ‘obligation’ interchangeably to indicate actions or forbearances that one is deemed bound to perform or observe. While we recognize that each concept can also be taken to have a specific, distinct connotation, this is consistent with much contemporary usage.
J. -P. Vernant (1990) ‘The Historical Moment of Tragedy in Greece: Some Social and Psychological Conditions’, in Vernant Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece ( New York: Zone Books ), p. 27.
J.-P. Vernant (1990) ‘Intimations of the Will in Greek Tragedy’, in Vernant Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (New York: Zone Books), pp. 49–84 (p. 79 ).
See, for example, T. W. Pogge ([2002] 2008 ) World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity Press)
and S. Caney (2005) Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory ( Oxford: Oxford University Press).
See T. Erskine (2001) ‘Assigning Responsibilities to Institutional Moral Agents: The Case of States and Quasi-states’, Ethics and International Affairs, 15, 67–85; Erskine (2004) “Blood on the UN’s Hands”? Assigning Duties and Apportioning Blame to an Intergovernmental Organization’, Global Society, 18/1, 21–42; Erskine (2010) ‘Kicking Bodies and Damning Souls: The Danger of Harming “Innocent” Individuals While Punishing Delinquent States’, Ethics and International Affairs, 24/3, 261–85, and the contributions to Erskine (ed.) (2003) Can Institutional Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). See also I. Clark et al. (forthcoming (2012)) Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) for a discussion of the special responsibilities of the United States understood as a moral agent.
B. Williams (1982) ‘Moral Luck’, in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 20–39. (An earlier version was published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary vol. 50 (1976), 115–36). The literature on ‘moral luck’ within philosophy is rich and challenging, at odds with standard ethical assumptions within normative IR theory, and ignored across the range of IR approaches that engage to some degree with questions of moral responsibility. A comprehensive account of this literature is beyond the scope of this chapter, but interested readers should also see the following: T. Nagel, ‘Moral Luck’ (1976) Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary vol. 50, 137–51; M. Nussbaum (1986) The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press); and the contributions to D. Statman (ed.) (1993) Moral Luck (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press).
J. -P. Vernant (1990) ‘The Historical Moment of Tragedy in Greece: Some of the Social and Psychological Conditions’, in Vernant Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, pp. 23–8 (p. 27 ).
G. Clore (1992) ‘Cognitive Phenomenology: Feelings and the Construction of Judgment’, in L. Martin and A. Tesser (eds) The Construction of Social Judgments (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum), pp. 133–63, and Clore et al. (2002) ‘Affective Feelings as Feedback: Some Cognitive Consequences’, in L. Martin and G. Clore (eds), Theories of Mood and Cognition ( Mahway, NJ: Erlbaum ), pp. 27–62;
A. Damasio (1996) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain ( New York: Putnam);
G. Jeffrey (1987) The Psychology of Fear and Stress, 2nd edn ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
For a good review of the literature, see R. McDermott (2004) ‘The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Science’, Perspectives in Politics, 2, 691–706.
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Erskine, T., Lebow, R.N. (2012). Learning from Tragedy and Refocusing International Relations. In: Erskine, T., Lebow, R.N. (eds) Tragedy and International Relations. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390331_14
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