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Human nature and truth as world order issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Miriam Steiner
Miriam Steiner
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia.
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Extract

“Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and the end of political education,” wrote Henry Adams. But human beings have never been able to agree on what constitutes “knowledge” of human nature and what excessively negative or naively wishful thinking about it. Because we differ in our conceptions of who we are, difficulties exist in agreeing upon what is a fit society and the methods appropriate and necessary for bringing it into being. Conflicting conceptions of human nature play a role in shaping and energizing all levels of political competition and conflict, from the interpersonal through the global.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 34 , Issue 3 , Summer 1980 , pp. 335 - 353
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1980

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References

I would like to thank Robert O. Keohane, Eugene Miller, Ira Robinson, J. David Singer, James H. Wolfe, and two unidentified referees of International Organization for reading earlier versions of this manuscript and making many helpful suggestions. The manuscript developed from a paper presented at the International Studies Association meeting in Toronto, 1979.

1 Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Waltz, Kenneth, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 28Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 159.

4 Ibid., p. 228.

5 Ibid., p. 238.

6 As noted in the preceding paragraph, Waltz suggests force as the only way to bring this heterogeneity under one authority. But since the heterogeneity may well be more potent than the amount of force available to subdue it, he concludes that efforts at global consolidation would be costly and likely to fail. Hence they are impractical.

7 Gerald, and Mische, Patricia, Toward a Human World Order (New York: Paulist Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., p. 28.

9 Waltz, pp. 228, 230–238.

10 Ibid., pp. 11–12. Waltz argues that the question of peace among states is prior to questions of justice and freedom.

11 There are other alternatives as well. For example, while von Weizsäcker, Carl-Friedrich, “A Skeptical Contribution,” On the Creation of a Just World Order, Mendlovitz, Saul H., ed. (New York: Free Press, 1975)Google Scholar, is as critical as the Misches are of a way of life structured primarily according to the dictates of the “power of power,” he differs from them in seeing self-realization as a prerequisite for global change, rather than the result to be expected from such change.

12 Mische, pp. 24–30.

13 Nielsen, Kai, “On Taking Human Nature as the Basis for Morality,” in Human Nature: Theories, Conjectures, and Descriptions, Mitchell, J. J., ed. (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1972), p. 36Google Scholar.

14 See, for example, Mazrui, Ali A., “World Culture and the Search for Human Consensus,” in , Mendlovitz, pp. 1–38Google Scholar; Lagos, Gustavo and Godoy, H. H., Revolution of Being (New York: Free Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Kreml, William P., “Value Relativism, Authoritarian Model, and World Order,” Alternatives III (03 1978): 445–454CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Barth, Hans, The Idea of Order, Hankamer, E. W. and Newell, W. M., trans. (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel Publishing Co., 1960), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Ibid. Barth elaborates on this point: “… Whatever the doctrine of truth may be, it has certain inevitable and determinable consequences for political theory. Philosophical investigations concerning the possibility and range of true human knowledge directly affect the sphere of social life. In other words, the difference between an absolute and a relative theory of truth is not only a problem of philosophy; rather, this difference is of decisive, constitutive importance in establishing institutions which form the public will. Man has always justified unlimited coercion by rightly or wrongly assuming and monopolizing the possession of some absolute truth. And obviously all those political theories which prepare and foster revolutions, and subsequently justify them, are very closely associated with theories of truth.”

17 Epistemology is being used here in a somewhat broader sense than usual. Later on in the paper epistemologies of power, consent, consensus, and philosophy will be introduced.

18 Barth, Hans, Truth and Ideology, Lilge, F., trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), p. 194Google Scholar.

19 These dimensions are similar, though not identical, to those employed by Masters, Roger D., “Human Nature, Nature, and Political Thought,” in Human Nature and Politics, Pennock, J. R. and Chapman, J. W., eds. (New York: New York University Press, 1977)Google Scholar, in his suggestive structural analysis of Western political theories of the state. It might be objected that to apply a framework developed for the classification of political theories of the state to global political theories ignores crucial levels-of-analysis issues, e.g., that the sociability of men within civil society tells us little about the peacefulness of international relations. For extensive discussions of this and related issues, see Hoffmann's, Stanley “Rousseau on War and Peace,” The State of War (New York: Praeger, 1965)Google Scholar; Waltz, Kenneth N., “Kant, Liberalism, and War,” American Political Science Review 56 (06, 1962): 331–340CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waltz's Man, the State, and War, and the chapter on Kant in Gallie, W. B., Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. My paper, however, deals with a different set of concerns. It seeks to lay out contrasting conceptions of human nature since these are related to universal judgments concerning how we ought to live—i.e., which ways of living are most valuable and desirable. It is concerned with violence and war to the extent that 1) value considerations of this sort motivate and shape human behavior on a global scale and 2) conflicts on these issues are not resolvable by peaceful means. Of special interest is the role knowledge might play in helping to resolve differences of global import over who we are and how we ought to live.

20 Waltz, p. 24.

21 Ibid., p. 26.

22 Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Ibid., p. 25.

24 Blainey, Geoffrey, The Causes of War (New York: The Free Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 See, for example, Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1973)Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., pp. 146–150, 529–560.

27 Lagos and Godoy, p. 98. All of the quotations used to illustrate the Global Society theory are from Lagos and Godoy. For the reasoning behind this seemingly unorthodox interpretation of their work, see pp. 346–47 of this article.

28 Ibid., p. 93.

29 Ibid., p. 92.

30 Ibid., p. 106.

31 Ibid., p. 94.

32 Ibid., pp. 106, III.

33 Ibid., pp. 91–152.

34 Ibid., pp. 91, 169.

35 Herrigel, Eugen brings out a somewhat similar distinction in an interesting way in his Zen in the Art of Archery, trans. Hull, R.F.C. (New York: Vintage Books, 1971)Google Scholar.

36 Lagos and Godoy, 96–112.

37 Ibid., p. 93.

38 Ibid., p. 97.

39 Ibid., pp. 98, 99.

40 Ibid., p. 106.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., pp. 108–109, 111.

43 Mische, pp. 24–30.

44 Ibid., p. 6.

45 Ibid., p. 19.

46 Ibid., pp. 277–329.

47 Mazrui, 34.

48 Ibid., p. 29.

49 Ibid., p. 35.

50 Ibid., p. 33.

51 Ibid., p. 35.

52 Alger, Chadwick F. and Hoovler, David G., You and Your Community in the World (Columbus, Ohio: Consortium for International Studies Education, 1978), pp. 2–8Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., p. 9.

54 Ibid., p. 1.

55 Ibid., p. 8.

56 As noted, Lagos and Godoy, for example, find it necessary to introduce critical and heroic types, the creators of new values, into their communitarian vision.

57 Kreml, p. 445.

58 It is the existence of organic complementarities which differentiates the structure of the Global Polis from David Ricardo's tragic world of prototypical workers, capitalists, and landlords, in which only the landlords stood to gain. See Heilbroner, Robert L., The Worldly Philosophers (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), pp. 67–95Google Scholar.

59 Kreml, p. 451.

60 Ibid., pp. 448, 449.

61 Ibid., p. 451.

62 Ibid.

63 Psychological Types, H. G. Baynes, trans.; rev. R. F. C. Hull. Bollingen Series XX (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 3.