Tragedy, 'Tragic Choices' and Contemporary International Political Theory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4444787 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chris Brown (0000-0002-9759-9624, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-13 |
| Publication date | 2007-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Relations (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-1178 • E-ISSN: 1741-2862 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117807073764 |
| OpenAlex | W2166129117 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 4 |
The essence of the tragic vision of the world is that human action sometimes, perhaps often, involves a choice between two radically incompatible but equally undesirable outcomes: that whatever we do in a given situation we will be, from one perspective, acting wrongly. This account of the human condition may be particularly germane to realist thought, but the absence of a sense of the tragic can be employed to critique many other areas of international political theory. Analytical political theory in general rejects the tragic vision, and a great deal of modern writing on humanitarian intervention and global distributive justice similarly refuses to accept that sometimes there are no unambiguously right answers; that to act is, necessarily, to do wrong. The unwillingness to admit the tragic dimension of human existence is not simply intellectually harmful but also politically debilitating
Action (physics) · Distributive justice · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Human condition · Intervention (counseling) · Law and economics · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Tragedy (event) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · War, Ethics, and Justification
Is R2P a Fully-Fledged International Norm
Necessary fiction
Transnational corporations in ‘bad states’
Fortune and irony in international politics
Comparing IR plots
International political economy and the question of ethics
The tragedy of justified war
Beyond Tragedy
International law and its discontents
Saving ourselves? On rescue and humanitarian action
Tragedy, genealogy and theories of International Relations
The politics of ethical foreign policy
The satiric vision of politics
A post-Hegelian theory of human rights
The ethics of climate politics
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,83 |
| Citation span | 2008 - 2025 (18) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 13 |