Our theory vs. theirs is a false dichotomy – no single knowledge system can ever effectively grasp truth, which means that their epistemic skepticism necessitates the perm.

We hold to the notion that pluralism necessarily entails epistemological skepticism: the position that no single knowledge system can ever possess the whole truth, at least as this applies to political matters. As Nick Rengger points out, pluralism in this sense is not the same thing as plurality: the fact that International Relations theorists already do deploy a range of approaches, theories, “-isms,” and methods in the pursuit of their work.18 This latter position is less a statement of value than a grudging acknowledgement of certain stubborn disciplinary realities: the failure of neopositivist “falsificationism” to create a uniform, normal social science of IR (or of political science) on the one hand, and IR’s rapid growth and persistent variegation on the other.19 Pluralism, by contrast, embraces diversity as inherently valuable for students of international politics, given that social-scientific concepts and categories can never do more than make provisional claims about a world that resists comprehensive organization through any single mode or scheme of explanation, interpretation, or analysis.20 Following Jeffrey Isaac, it holds that scholarship from a variety of different perspectives and sensibilities must have “not simply a place” in the academic study of politics, “but a valued place.” 21 So understood, a clear fissure seems to run through what might otherwise appear to be widespread agreement on the value of pluralism, creating at times strange intellectual bedfellows. Despite differences over methods and methodology, analytical eclecticists like Katzenstein and Sil, bridging-the-gap pluralists like Bruce Jentleson, and some proponents of phron¯esis, share a view of knowledge as ultimately singular and attainable. On the other side of the equation, those arguing for a wider understanding of science and knowledge like Patrick Jackson and Daniel Nexon, and reflexivists concerned with scholarship’s influence on politics like Inanna Hamati-Ataya share with scholars such as John Mearsheimer a concern with fostering pluralism and not just plurality—despite disagreement over many other issues of theory, method, and interpretation. Beyond highlighting the lack of consistency in what appears a unified call for greater pluralism in IR, our contribution is to demonstrate that, when understood as a necessary implication of epistemological skepticism, claims to pluralism take on a more critically reflexive role than present debates have recognized. As such, pluralism no longer promises to resolve the inherent contingency of politics or to transcend the limits of theory. Rather, its use is rather fundamentally pedagogical: it “teaches us to beware the tyranny of certainty.” 22 Pluralism thus becomes a habit of mind, which one cultivates to resist the ever-present danger of reification: conflating the concepts used to describe or classify things with the things themselves.“Philosophy . . . lives on because the moment to realize it was missed” noted Frankfurt School sociologist Theodor Adorno.23 Adorno’s point, which applies to social and political theory no less than to “pure” philosophical speculation, was threefold. First, that the continued search for truth beyond thought contained an ineluctable limitation, insofar as such truth could only be arrived at through thought—and thought always takes place within the world it means to understand or explain. Second, that the nature of thinking makes that limitation difficult to keep fully present to mind. Mere awareness of it does not suffice: scholars need to “arrange their thoughts and actions” so as to continually underscore it.24 Third, that failing to do so renders theory vulnerable to the worst kinds of tendentious appropriation, notwithstanding the intention of the theorist.