A Critical Analysis of Western Rationalist Foundations in International Relations: The Shift from Positivism to Post-Positivism in the Copenhagen School
Pages
183-204Abstract
Research Idea: This research stems from a critical epistemological review of the Copenhagen School in security studies and examines the extent to which it has developed an epistemological perspective distinct from positivism, or instead constitutes a flexible extension of it.
Objective: The research seeks to deconstruct the school’s philosophical and conceptual foundations, including securitization, sectors, and audience, in order to uncover its implicit reliance on Western “Westphalian” rationalist frameworks, the model of rational agency, and a systematic classificatory tendency.
Methodology: To achieve this objective, the research employs two analytical tools: critical discourse analysis and comparative epistemological analysis, with the aim of deconstructing the implicit linguistic and epistemological structures embedded in the school’s texts.
Results: The central finding is that the Copenhagen School has not established a complete epistemological rupture with positivism; rather, it represents a form of “late positivism”. It successfully integrates linguistic analysis of security discourse with certain rationalist assumptions inherited from the positivist tradition, thereby keeping its understanding of security tied to classificatory and normative frameworks that determine what is regarded as “normal” and what is perceived as “exceptional”.
Conclusion: The research concludes that Copenhagen School “post-positivism” exhibits a high degree of absorptive flexibility, enabling it to reappropriate deconstructive critique and deploy it to modernize the very structure of Western rationality. This, in turn, has resulted in the epistemological and structural exclusion of non-Western security practices and systems that do not conform to the logic of elite “speech acts”.
Keywords:
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