Of false promises and good bets: a plea for a pragmatic approach to theory building

Introduction
• why is it that a nearly hypertrophic concern with epistemological issues continues to characterize the field of international relations
• since neither the ‘order of being’ nor the categories of the mind provide an unproblematic and trans-historically valid Archimedean point that allows for an incontestable ‘view from nowhere’, the traditional epistemological project cannot make good on its promise
• Kratochwil tries to refute the twin fallacies that fuel hypertrophic concern with epistemology
- that in the absence of secure universally valid and trans-historically established criteria everything becomes ‘relative’
- since the foundationalist claims of traditional epistemology can be shown to be faulty, indeed ‘anything goes’
According to Kratochwil those absurd impasses reset from two assumptions of traditional epistemology:
1. that truth is a property of the ‘world’ out there
2. that there logically only exist two possibilities
• Kratochwil argues for a pragmatic turn in theorizing