隨著西方霸權的衰落，國際關係學界對於主流理論中的「歐洲中心論」日益感到不滿，而「後西方國 際關係學」的呼聲也隨之應運而生。然而，如何實現這個目標，學界仍莫衷一是。作者曾大膽提出一 個論點：現代國際關係就其起源而言，是西方特定文明的產物，因此欲超越西方的國際關係學，首先 必須將現代國際關係視為西方文明的一個面向。按此觀點，西方的國際關係理論乃是此種文明的某一 層面的概念化而已，自然具有其歷史獨特性。為了理解其獨特性，吾人必須重新將西方文明與其他文 明做一比較。在文明的比較研究上，韋伯可以說是一位重要的奠基者。然而，由於其方法論過於複雜， 過去長期被學界忽視，直到近年來因為「文明的轉向」才重新受到重視。本計晝的目標就是要根據「文 明研究」領域對韋伯方法論的重新思考，提煉出一套「韋伯式」的分析架構，此架構未來將用於分析 西方國際體系的形成過程。為了避免變成一種純社會學的研究，在從事這項工作時，作者會援引國際 關係的歷史社會學關於文明研究的討論來與之對話，並將討論具焦在國際體系的變遷上，如此才能有 助於開創國際關係的新研究議程，而非只是重複歷史學家已有的文明分析。
As witnessed by many observers, the Western domination of the world is declining dramatically. Against this backdrop, students of International Relations are increasingly aware of the “Eurocentrism” inherent in mainstream IR theories, and thus the call for Post-Western IR is on the rise. However, there is little consensus on how Post-Western IR is possible and what direction it should take. The author proposes that modern international relations, as far as its origin is concerned, must be seen as a product of specific civilization—the Western civilization, and thus IR must be understood as a way of conceptualizing a specific dimension—international relations—of a specific civilization. To uncover this uniqueness, we must once again compare it with other civilizations. As a pioneer, Max Weber has laid the foundation in this area of study. However, because his method is too complicated, his contributions have been under-valued for many decades. Now we are witnessing the coming back of his methodology due to the “civilizational turn” in social sciences. The purpose of this project is to build on the contemporary re-evaluation of Weber5s work and distill from it a Weberian analytical framework to comparative civilizations. This framework will be applied to substantive analyses on the origin of modern international system in the future. To avoid becoming a purely sociological enterprise, this project will bring into dialogue with the researches carried out in Historical Sociology of International Relations (HSIR). The focal point shall be on the formation process of the modern international system, so that it could generate new research programs in IR and not a simple recovery of civilizational analysis that already done by historians.
