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Spinoza, Carr, and the ethics of The Twenty Years' Crisis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2013

SEÁN MOLLOY
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Abstract

This article reads Carr through the lens of Spinoza's ethics, and Spinoza through the prism of Carr's IR Theory. The argument of the piece is that there are significant parallels in the ethical projects of both writers, which upon further examination reveal important aspects of global political life and the nature and limits of ethics in International Relations. The close, critical examination of Spinoza ad Carr undertaken in this article also sheds light on the most controversial aspect of Carr's career, his advocacy of appeasement in Nazi Germany.

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Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 251 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2013

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References

1 See Molloy, Seán, ‘Hans J. Morgenthau Versus E. H. Carr: Conflicting Conceptions of Ethics in Realism’, in Bell, D. S. A, Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 83–4Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Murray, Alasdair, Reconstructing Realism: Between Power Politics and Cosmopolitan Ethics (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Lebow, Richard Ned, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, Michael C., The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The two most developed pieces specifically dedicated to Carr's ethics are Rich, Paul, ‘E. H. Carr and the Quest for Moral Revolution in International Relations’, Cox, Michael (ed.), E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2000)Google Scholar; and Molloy, Seán, ‘Hans J. Morgenthau Versus E. H. Carr: Conflicting Conceptions of Ethics in Realism’, in Bell, D. S. A., Political Thought and International Relations. Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar. Excellent general studies of Carr's life and work include: Haslam, Jonathan, The Vices of Integrity: E. H. Carr, 1892–1982 (London: Verso, 2000)Google Scholar; Jones, Charles, E. H. Carr: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; and Cox, Michael's introduction to the 2001 edition of The Twenty Years' Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001)Google Scholar. For the IR context in which Carr operated see Wilson, Peter, ‘Carr and his Early Critics: Responses to The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1939–46’, in Cox, Michael (ed.), E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2000)Google Scholar; and Wilson, Peter, ‘The Myth of the First Great Debate’, Review of International Studies, 24:5 (1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 135. Carr used the terms ethics and morality interchangeably.

5 Necati Polat indicates an affinity between the Realist and Spinozist projects in Alternatives, 35 (2010), p. 321.

6 In a letter to Franz Overbeck, Nietzsche writes: ‘I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: what brought me to him now was the guidance of instinct’, Nietzsche, Friedrich, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. and ed. Middleton, Christopher (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1969), p. 177Google Scholar.

7 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 62.

8 Ibid., p. 63.

9 Ibid., p. 140.

10 Ibid., p. 146.

11 Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism, p. 141. Hampshire expands on this point later in the text: ‘To speak of “gratitude”, “good faith” or “the sanctity of promises” in such contexts is only playing with words; as it is impossible to expect any individual, to act in such a way as will clearly lead to its own destruction of to the loss of its power’, p. 150.

12 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 161.

13 Baruch/Spinoza, Benedict, ‘Political Treatise’, Complete Works, ed. Morgan, Michael L., trans. Shirley, Samuel (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), pp. 700, 747Google Scholar. As Curley, Edwin writes, ‘Spinoza classes him, not with the philosophers attacked in Political Treatise i.1, but with the politicians, who are praised in Political Treatise i.2, for having learned from experience to anticipate the wicked conduct of men, and for having, as a result, written successfully about human affairs’, ‘Kissinger, Spinoza and Genghis Khan’, Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 329Google Scholar.

14 Spinoza, Political Treatise, p. 680.

15 Spinoza, , ‘Ethics’, in Complete Works, ed. Morgan, Michael L., trans. Shirley, Samuel (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), p. 325Google Scholar.

16 Spinoza, Political Treatise, p. 688.

17 Spinoza, , ‘Theological-Political Treatise’, in Complete Works, ed. Morgan, Michael L., trans. Shirley, Samuel (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), p. 528Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 530.

19 Spinoza, Political Treatise, p. 694. Balibar demonstrates the dynamics of this relationship by means of a domestic analogy: ‘Only a superior power (for example, a sovereign who chooses to enforce respect for commitments entered into by a law of the State) can, therefore, prevent contracts from being broken when the interests which led them to be signed no longer exist (TP, II, 12–13). But if this power sought to enforce such a law in a great many simultaneous cases it would thereby put its own power at risk. The same is true of contracts made between States, save that in this case there is no superior authority, and the decisive factor is therefore the interests of the parties involved.’ Balibar, Étienne, Spinoza and Politics (London: Verso, 2008), p. 62Google Scholar.

20 Spinoza, Political Treatise, p. 694.

21 Ibid., p. 695.

22 Balibar expresses Spinoza's task well in Spinoza and Politics: ‘Spinoza's purpose here is not to justify the notion of right, but to form an adequate idea of its determinations, of the way in which it works. In this sense, his formula can be glossed as meaning that the individual's right includes all that he is effectively able to do and to think in a given set of conditions’, p. 59.

23 See Hampshire, Stuart, Spinoza and Spinozism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), p. 138Google Scholar.

24 Spinoza, Political Treatise, p. 681. As Armstrong, Aurelia writes, Spinoza's significance lies in the fact that he thought against the grain of seventeenth-century rationalism, regarding the passional nature of human beings as ‘the very field of investigation upon which ethical and political theory must be founded’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 17:2 (2009), p. 279CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Williams, David Lay, ‘Spinoza and the General Will’, The Journal of Politics, 72:2 (April 2010), p. 342CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Balibar's concise articulation, ‘Sociability rooted in the passions is therefore necessarily conflictual.’ Spinoza and Politics, p. 112.

26 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 278.

27 Ibid., p. 283. Both the human conatus and the conatus of all things, animate and inanimate, share the striving or tendency to persist in their own forms, but the human conatus is different in the sense that it is also linked to specifically human attributes, for example, reason and appetite.

28 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 284.

29 According to Don Garrett, ‘The tendency towards self-preservation (perseverance in being) thus becomes, a priori, an essential and defining feature of the natures of all individual things, including all human beings,’ Garrett, Don, ‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory’, in Garrett, Don (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 290.

31 Ibid., p. 300.

32 Ibid., p. 307.

33 Ibid., pp. 311–12.

34 Balibar, Spinoza and Ethics, p. 63.

35 Don Garrett, ‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory’, p. 277. See also, Youpa, Andrew, ‘Spinoza's Theory of Motivation’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 88 (2007), p. 387CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Campos, Andre Santos, ‘The Individuality of the State in Spinoza's Political Philosophy’, Archiv für Geschichte Der Philosophie, 92:1 (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 338.

38 Garrett, ‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory’, p. 298.

39 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 338.

40 Montag, Warren, ‘Imitating the Affects of Beasts: Interest and Inhumanity in Spinoza’, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 20:2/3 (2009), p. 69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Nadler, Steven, Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Curley, ‘Kissinger’, p. 322.

43 Rutherford, Donald, ‘Spinoza and the Dictates of Reason’, Inquiry, 51:5 (2008), p. 496CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 ‘As for the terms “good” and “bad”, they likewise indicate nothing positive in things considered in themselves, and are nothing but modes of thinking, or notions which we form comparing things with one another. For one and the same thing can be good and bad, and also indifferent.’ Spinoza, Ethics, p. 321.

45 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 331. See in explanation of this David Lay Williams, ‘Spinoza and the General Will’, pp. 341–56.

46 Spinoza Ethics, p. 341.

47 Ibid., p. 345.

48 Ibid., p. 360.

49 Spinoza, Ibid., p. 346.

50 Balibar: ‘Individual reason by itself is too weak and must therefore always have recourse to passions that are bad in themselves (that is, are causes of sadness, such as glory, ambition, humility, and so on). In this way, one affect can be used to overcome another’, Spinoza and Politics, p. 96. Pride is particularly complex in Spinoza's analysis of emotions. Excessive pride, in either exultation of one's own value or self-abasement, is especially problematic, while some positives may be found in ‘ordinary’ pride.

51 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 351.

52 Ibid., p. 366.

53 Ibid., p. 369.

54 Aurelia Armstrong, ‘Natural and Unnatural Communities’, p. 303. For Genevieve Lloyd, ‘In understanding the passions we do not merely exercise an enjoyable intellectual power which leaves the passions themselves unchanged. This understanding transforms the passions into active, rational emotions – the source of freedom and virtue.’ Lloyd, Genvieve, Spinoza and the Ethics (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 72Google Scholar.

55 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 381.

56 Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, p. 94.

57 Spinoza, Ethics, p. 359.

58 Jones, Charles, E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 46–65Google Scholar. On Carr's use of rhetoric see Buzan, Barry, Jones, Charles, and Little, Richard, The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 206–8Google Scholar. See also Wilson, Peter, ‘Radicalism for a Conservative Purpose: The Peculiar Realism of E. H. Carr’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30:1 (2001), p. 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 E. H. Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 84.

60 Spinoza, Tractatus Theolgico-Politicus, pp. 327–34.

61 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 86.

62 Garrett puts this in the context of a contrast between determinism and fatalism: ‘Spinoza is not a fatalist. For although he holds that all volitions, behaviors, and other events are completely determined by their causes, he does not deny that volitions are among the causes of behavior, nor that behaviors are sometimes among the causes of other events … Spinoza, is, however, a necessitarian; he does hold that everything true is true necessarily. One aspect of his necessitarianism is his determinism: that is, his acceptance of the doctrine that the total state of the universe at any given time plus the laws of nature jointly determine the total state of the universe at any future time.’ ‘Spinoza's Ethical Theory,’ p. 298.

63 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 87.

64 See Charles Jones, E. H. Carr: A Duty to Lie, pp. 53–4.

65 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 143.

66 Ibid., p. 144.

67 Ibid., p. 145.

68 Ibid., p. 146.

69 Ibid., p. 149.

70 Ibid., p. 166.

71 Ibid., p. 151.

72 Ibid., p. 189.

73 Ibid., p. 144.

74 Ibid., p. 144.

75 Ibid., p. 145.

76 Ibid., p. 148.

77 Ibid., p. 150.

78 For the contemporary context and long-term disciplinary impact of Carr's support for appeasement, see Ian Hall, ‘Power Politics and Appeasement: Political Realism in British International Thought, 1935–1955’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 8:2 (2006).

79 Quoted in Michael Cox, ‘From the First to the Second Editions of The Twenty Years' Crisis: A Case of Self-Censorship?’, Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. lxxvi.

80 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 199.

81 Wilson, Peter, ‘Carr and his Early Critics: Responses to The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1939–1946’, in Cox, Michael (ed.), E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 187Google Scholar.

82 Carr, ‘Honour Among Nations’, Fortnightly (May 1939), p. 499.

83 Carr, E. H., Britain: A Study of Foreign Policy from the Versailles Treaty to the Outbreak of War (London: Longmans, Green, 1939), p. 148Google Scholar.

84 E. H. Carr, ‘The Versailles Fiasco’, Times Literary Supplement (6 June 1968), p. 565.

85 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 201.

86 In his account of his time as a member of the British delegation to the Treaty of Versailles, Carr records, ‘I was outraged by French intransigence and by our [the British] unfairness to the Germans, whom we cheated over the “Fourteen Points” and subjected to every petty humiliation.’ E. H. Carr, ‘An Autobiography’, in Cox, E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal, p. xvi. Carr here reflects a common belief at the time, perhaps best exemplified by Keynes, John Maynard, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (London: Macmillan, 1919)Google Scholar that Germany had been subject to a vindictive and punitive peace. Margaret Macmillan argues that this common perception was mistaken, that the Treaty was not vindictive and, in particular, it was not harshly enforced. Macmillan, Margaret, The Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and its Attempt to End War (London: John Murray, 2001)Google Scholar.

87 John Hallett (E. H. Carr), ‘The Prussian Complex,’ Fortnightly Review (1 Jan 1933), p. 43.

88 Carr, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. 201.

89 ‘Was it not possible’, wrote Carr in Britain: A Study in Foreign Policy, ‘by substituting a consistent policy of conciliation and concession – which had never yet been tried – for one of intransigence and criticism, to bring about a détente with one or more of the potentially hostile powers?’, p. 167.

90 Carr, ‘An Autobiography’, p. xix in Cox, Michael, E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001)Google Scholar. The mistreatment of the Germans in the Treaty of Versailles is one of the few instances in his work where justice plays an important role – and this is as much a question of political mismanagement as moral critique.

91 E. H. Carr, ‘An Autobiography’, p. xix. Carr believed that the only tangible success of appeasement was that it kept the Italians out of the war – at least at the beginning.

92 E. H. Carr, Britain: A Study in Foreign Policy, p. 149.

93 Deleuze, Gilles, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988), p. 23Google Scholar.

94 Ibid., p. 41.

95 Deleuze, Gilles, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (New York: Zone Books, 1992), p. 246Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

96 Ibid., p. 254.

97 Deleuze, Expressionism, p. 261.

98 Ibid., p. 247, emphasis in original.

99 E. H. Carr, ‘Hostile Views of Munich. A Polemic and a Record’ (review of R. W. Seton-Watson, Munich and the Dictators), Times Literary Supplement (11 March 1939), p. 142.

100 Michael Cox, ‘Introduction’, Twenty Years' Crisis, p. xxvii.

101 E. H. Carr, ‘Honour Among Nations: A Critique of International Cant’, The Fortnightly (May 1939), p. 492.

102 In ‘Impressions of a Visit to Russia and Germany’, Carr writes that he did not ‘think it any use to talk of the wickedness of one side of the other, whether Hitler is wickeder than Stalin or the converse is true. The question of personal wickedness and good and bad fairies can be left to the fairy tale school of history which I hope is, today, nearly extinct.’ quoted in Jonathan Haslam, The Vices of Integrity, p. 78.

103 Hallett/Carr, ‘The Prussian Complex’, p. 40.

104 Carr, Britain: A Study in Foreign Policy, p. 152.

105 Ibid., p. 153.

106 Ibid., p. 176. Carr's analysis largely chimes with but ultimately departs from that of contemporary historians such as Richard Overy in that Overy argues that Britain could not have realistically fought a war much earlier than 1939, where they differ is in the question of preparing for war: in The Road to War, Overy uncovers evidence that Britain had begun to plan for war with Germany as early as 1934. Britain's rearmament programme envisaged 1939 as the year in which it would reach peak preparedness: a war before this date would be fought with inadequate weapons, a war fought much after this date would be conducted at a disadvantage as the German capacity for war would reach its peak in the early 1940s. For Overy, Munich was conducted in the hope that Hitler might be satisfied with the Sudetenland, but it was also an attempt to stall for time in order to enable the final phases of war preparedness.

107 Paul Rich, ‘E. H. Carr and the Quest for Moral Revolution in International Relations’, p. 207.

108 Carr was later to restate the limits of reason's ability to curtail the passions: ‘exhortations to human beings to behave rationally and not emotionally, like exhortations to love one another, are liable to fall on deaf ears.’ E. H. Carr, ‘Conflicts of Interest’, (Review of Erich Fromm, May Man Prevail?) Times Literary Supplement (21 September 1962), p. 745.

109 Morgenthau, Hans, ‘The Political Science of E. H. Carr’, World Politics, 1:1 (1948), p. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Ibid., pp. 133–4.

111 E. H. Carr, Britain, p. 175.

112 One of Carr's early critics, A. L. Rowse, remarks positively on Carr's ‘manful’ attempts to ‘think out anew the nature of politics’ but condemns what he calls his ‘Chamberlainism’, which he advises Carr to omit from future editions. Rowse, A. L., ‘Review of The Twenty Years' Crisis’, The Economic Journal, 51:201 (1941), pp. 92–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a further articulation of Carr's ‘mistakes’, but also the long term benefits of his theory viewed separately from those mistakes, see also Wilson, Peter, ‘E. H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis. Appearance and Reality in World Politics’, Politik, 12:4 (2009), pp. 21–5Google Scholar.