Hedley Bull graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Philosophy in 1952 before heading to Oxford to study for a B.Phil. in Politics. As mentioned above, it was as a young academic at the LSE that Bull came into contact with Martin Wight, the figure most often attributed with influencing his intellectual development. Despite Wight’s impact on Bull however, it is also possible to identify a number of significant points of divergence between his thought and that of Bull, particularly in relation to questions of religion and ethics in international society. As Ian Hall notes, throughout his life Wight was ‘a fervent and rather traditionalist Anglican’,[78] his religious faith exerting a significant impact upon his own treatment of international relations. This, however, was a source of great consternation for Bull who admitted in ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’ that he often ‘felt uneasy about the extent to which Wight’s view of International Relations derived from his religious beliefs’.[79] As we will see shortly however, Bull’s views on religion and ethics accorded well with those of his earliest mentor, John Anderson. In particular, Bull’s time at the University of Sydney coincided with Anderson’s ‘religion in education’ phase. Indeed, Bull is acknowledged, albeit for his misunderstanding of Anderson’s position, in the 1950 lecture ‘The Nature of Freethought’:
Hedley Bull’s ‘defence’ of me says that I give an initial training in logic which is NON-Christian (not anti-Christian) and then state my conclusions (which are anti-Christian) and the student may disagree and criticise. But I do not ‘state’, but draw conclusions. I show that what follows from premises I assume anyone will accept.
The influence of Anderson on Bull also extended to other aspects of Bull’s thought and style. As Michael Howard has noted: ‘It was from Anderson that [Bull] learned that a combination of open-mindedness in approach and rigour in analysis which was to distinguish him throughout his career and which he would in due time pass on to his own pupils.’[80] Bull also shared with Anderson a sceptical mind and an ‘abrasive and arrogant manner’.[81]
Like Anderson, Bull was also renowned for his Socratic style. As James Richardson wrote, ‘amongst the qualities he prized most were the Socratic questioning of received opinion’, adding later that ‘in his commitment to the Socratic pursuit of the argument irrespective of where it might lead, his sharp eye for illusion and rationalisation, his suspicion of orthodoxies, and his scorn for superficiality, Bull remained quintessentially Andersonian’.[82] Also following in Anderson’s footsteps Bull was, as Don Markwell wrote, ‘a master of demolition’.[83] ‘Remorseless in criticism’,[84] Bull believed that the ‘enterprise of theoretical investigation is at its minimum one directed towards criticism’.[85] Unlike Anderson however, Bull was ‘highly receptive to other people’s impressions of his own work’.[86] Also deviating from Anderson, Bull’s lecturing style was, as a former student wrote, ‘impressive, even dazzling’.[87]
Despite some differences in character and style however, Bull made many elements of Anderson’s approach ‘his own and applied it rigorously’,[88] going so far as to suggest that ‘none could apply [Anderson’s] precepts better than Bull’. In particular, Bull held firmly to the empiricism that Anderson had promulgated. As he explained in ‘International Theory: The Case for the Classical Approach’, this did not amount to a ‘strict’ empiricism of the sort adhered to by proponents of the ‘scientific approach to international relations theory’,[89] but was rather understood in the manner Anderson had intended. In particular, it is in the following statement that Bull’s empiricism and general philosophical realism is evident:
Theoretical inquiry into an empirical subject normally proceeds by way of the assertion of general connections and distinctions between events in the real world. But it is the practice of many of these writers to cast their theories in the form of a deliberately simplified abstraction from reality, which they then turn over and examine this way and that before considering what modifications must be effected if it is to be applied to the real world.[90]
Aside from the general criticisms he leveled at proponents of the ‘scientific approach’ for the extent to which their ideas were abstracted from reality, Bull was particularly concerned with the deductive reasoning central to the construction of models favoured by this approach. ‘The virtue that is supposed to lie in models’, he wrote, ‘is that [of] liberating us from the restraint of constant reference to reality’.[91] However, as he continued:
The freedom of the model-builder from the discipline of looking at the world is what makes him dangerous; he slips easily into a dogmatism that empirical generalisation does not allow, attributing to the model a connection with reality it does not have, and as often as not distorting the model itself by importing additional assumptions about the world in the guise of logical axioms. The very intellectual completeness and logical tidiness of the model-building operation lends it an air of authority which is often quite misleading as to its standing as a statement about the real world.[92]
However, not only was Bull a philosophical realist and empiricist but, also in accordance with Anderson, a positivist. As Maurice Keens-Soper once remarked to Martin Wight regarding an argument he had had with Bull over the nature of historical facts: ‘He, for goodness sake, turns out to be a positivist, at least in this matter. He maintained that historical facts were in principle no different from the ‘facts’ which our senses give us.’[93]
[78] Ian Hall, ‘Challenge and Response: The Lasting Engagement of Arnold J. Toynbee and Martin Wight’, International Relations, vol. 17, no. 3, 2003, pp. 389–404 (393). For a more detailed consideration of Wight’s religious views see I. Hall, The International Thought of Martin Wight, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2006 (chapter 2).
[79] Bull, ‘Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations’, in G. Wight and B. Porter (eds), International Theory: The Three Traditions, pp. ix–xxiii (xxiii).
[80] Michael Howard, ‘Hedley Norman Bull’, Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 72, 1986, pp. 395–408 (395).
[81] Michael Howard, ‘Hedley Bull: A Eulogy for his Memorial Service’, in R. O’Neill and D.N. Schwartz (eds), Hedley Bull on Arms Control, p. 276.
[82] Richardson, ‘The Academic Study of International Relations’, in J.D.B. Miller and R.J. Vincent (eds), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations, pp. 145–77 (pp. 149 and 175).
[83] Don Markwell, ‘Hedley Bull as a Teacher’, in R. O’Neill and D.N. Schwartz (eds), Hedley Bull on Arms Control, p. 280.
[84] Miller, ‘Hedley Bull, 1932–1985’, in J.D.B. Miller and R.J. Vincent (eds), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations, p. 10.
[85] Hedley Bull, ‘The Theory of International Politics, 1919–1969’, in B. Porter (ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969, Oxford University Press, London, 1972, p. 32.
[86] Miller, ‘Hedley Bull, 1932–1985’, in J.D.B. Miller and R.J. Vincent (eds), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations, p. 10.
[87] Markwell, ‘Hedley Bull as a Teacher’, in R. O’Neill and D.N. Schwartz (eds), Hedley Bull on Arms Control, p. 279.
[88] O’Neill and Schwartz, Hedley Bull on Arms Control, p. 3.
[89] Hedley Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, World Politics, vol. 18, no. 3, 1966, pp. 361–77 (362).
[90] Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, World Politics, pp. 361–77 (370).
[91] Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, World Politics, pp. 361–77 (370).
[92] Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, World Politics, pp. 361–77 (371).
[93] Maurice Keens-Soper, ‘Letters from Maurice Keens-Soper to Martin Wight’, Wight MSS 233 6/9, 9 August 1971.