Epistemological Bases “Epistemological Bases for Teaching IR Theory”

To teach IR as a discipline, as opposed to a set of disjointed claims that do not speak to each other about different aspects of international politics, we need to teach students not just specific theories, but also how to think about theory. In order to do this, we need to teach them not only about methodology (understood as how to study specific political relationships) and ontology (what matters in the world), but also epistemology (how we think about theory in the first place). This chapter outlines a set of epistemological concepts and distinctions that can help students understand what ‘theory’ means to different IR scholars at different times. It argues that epistemology conceptually precedes theory and that therefore we cannot teach theory effectively without addressing epistemology. Finally, it looks at three common general approaches to epistemology in IR theory as examples of the argument, positivism, Weberianism, and critical theory.