1 Vico contra Kant: The Competing Critical Theories of Cox and Linklater Richard Devetak University of Queensland Introduction This chapter juxtaposes the work of Robert W. Cox and Andrew Linklater. Both are regarded as leading critical theorists of international relations, as this edited collection attests, but both offer very different accounts of what such a critical international theory might entail. This is largely a result of their contrasting intellectual heritages. Despite sharing a common inheritance from Karl Marx, Linklater and Cox draw upon vastly different literatures. Rather than survey and analyse the full range of similarities and differences in the critical theory programmes elaborated by Linklater and Cox, I shall focus on one aspect: their approach to history. Unlike many other critical international theorists – who tend to limit their temporal horizons to the very recent past, the present, and quite often, distant speculative futures – Linklater and Cox both engage seriously with history. However, as we shall see, they adopt very different approaches. Linklater’s approach to history is informed and guided primarily by the philosopher of Königsberg, Immanuel Kant, Cox by the Neapolitan professor of rhetoric, Giambattista Vico. The rival understandings of history offered by these two eighteenth‐century thinkers lead our twenty‐first century thinkers to develop divergent critical theories. Reflecting on his identity in the context of IR as a discipline, Robert W. Cox, in the interview published in this volume, recalls Susan Strange’s description of him as an eccentric. Among the reasons Cox concurs with Strange’s judgment, is that in International Relations he is almost alone in writing about ‘Vico, Sorel or Collingwood’. This is undoubtedly true when considering the work that currently passes under the banner of ‘critical theory’. Unfashionably, Cox fails to engage with the intellectuals of Paris and Frankfurt who have dominated various strains of ‘critical theory’ in