1 ON PRAGMATISM (IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS) Hannes Peltonen, PhD * University of Tampere hannes.peltonen@staff.uta.fi One recent development in the field of International Relations (IR) is the so-called pragmatic turn. But what is pragmatism? One could say that the early roots of pragmatism lie in Ancient Greece. For instance Aristotle distinguished different kinds of knowledge. One such distinction was a division between theoretical and practical knowledge that highlights the difference between universal, timeless, and scientific knowledge, and knowledge that is contextual and practical. The latter could be understood as technical knowledge, technê, or as practical wisdom or prudence, phronêsis. Clearly, though, one cannot conclude that Aristotle was a pragmatist, but his distinction between different kinds of knowledge lies behind the idea of pragmatism. Pragmatism focuses on studying and using practical knowledge, and in a wider sense it casts attention to the role practices play in how knowledge is constituted and constructed in the sciences, in research, and in the social world. As a philosophical approach, its “home” may be said to be in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead were influential figures in advancing pragmatism. Naturally, though, there were pragmatists also elsewhere at the beginning of the twentieth century, for instance in * Published at SocialScience.in at URL: http://www.socialsciences.in/article/pragmatism-international-relations Dr. Hannes Peltonen, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Tampere, Finland, received his PhD from the European University Institute, Italy. He is Associate at the Centre for Advanced International Theory, University of Sussex, and the author of International Responsibility and Grave Humanitarian Crises (Routledge 2013) and a number of international peer-reviewed articles. Peltonen’s recent research has focused on global institutions, justice, and ethics as well as approaches to International Relations including constructivism and pragmatism.