Human distinction and the disposition to war : an essay on the moral psychology of international relations

Abstract

This thesis develops an approach to international relations and the evaluation of international hostilities which re-approximates these concerns at once to theoretical consideration of human nature as such, mankind's specific location within the natural order, and to the ancient tradition of evaluating constitutions and social structures in terms of their comparative capacity to facilitate the fulfilment of the higher human faculties. The capacity of a nation to accommodate rationally to the foreign or the unknown is linked internally to its capacity to maintain and enjoy the conditions of republican civility at home. The contemporary order, however, is in large measure founded on the presumption that the erosion of cultural differences and the spread of uniformity of material aspirations and self-definitions is itself conducive to international peace. The thesis questions the validity of this outlook and claims on the contrary that the globalization of unitary idioms obliterates the historical and material distinctions between peoples which are the precondition of their evolving self-aware and satisfactory lives consistent with their particular traditions. The result is that much conflict in the conditions of enforced intimacy of modern international relations is based as much on artificial and irrational antipathies as on real differences of principle. But our capacity to discern this and act on it is compromised by loss of care for or understanding of the conditions of civility. Their recovery is therefore essential.

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