Session 19: Prospects of Inter-paradigm Period

The piece written by Yosef Lapid is a reflection of the prospects of the third debate in International Relations. Since the birth of International Relations as a discipline, its need for development and progress has no end. After the two great debates in International Relations between Realism-Idealism and traditionalism vs. scientism, the third great debate is more about the fundamental nature of knowledge and its development over the time.

He stated Anthony Giddens’ four responses to Meta-theory and its limitations after the collapse of positivism, namely the Despairing, the Dogmatic, the Celebratory and the Systematic Reconstruction of social theory. And to explore the prospects etiology of the debate, Yosef Lapid took the celebratory response. Neither positivist philosophy nor post-positivists ideas are under one philosophical platform. Both eras contains arrays of huge different confusing ideas. Therefore, according to Yosef Lapid, the convergence in general idea is essential here. Moreover he highlights the three basic key points of post-positivism namely Paradigmatism, Perspectivism and Relativism to explore the fundamentals and foundation of knowledge in theorizing concept in International Relations.

No doubt that the paper has provided a new dimension to think about International politics. He proposed an organized, or I would say more creative framework of third great debate. But while doing so, he has gone into so complicated ideas, along with the use of words, which are hard to grasp. Therefore, this makes a difficult task for readers to understand his work. Moreover, a little bit of explanation with the help of relevant examples would make this piece more easier to understand and interesting as well.