Rethinking human nature in IR

A few students have asked me what I will be reading this summer. My answer: I´ll be reading up in two distinct areas of thought that I think are really interesting for us politicos. The first is in the area of human nature studies.

Social theories usually assume something about our nature, often implicitly. As good political theorists we ought to reflect on the role these assumptions play. We should not only know the role they play in the thought of the big thinkers such as Hobbes or Locke or Rousseau, all of whom stress different ´natures´ when they develop their account, but also be sensitive to how and why ideas about our nature have altered over time. Take for example Darwinian or Freudian ideas: both have exercised a considerable influence when it comes to explaining (and in the case of Darwin) justifying war, even though we don´t really consider either a “political thinker”.

It is not just grand theory that dwells on human nature. Policy is also framed in terms of our background assumptions on the topic, as Maddison well understood: “what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature”. When we role out a new policy, or even consider an option, do we assume people are trustworthy, sociable, rational, or are they egoistic, greedy, aggressive, or some mix of all the above (and more)? 

The point is to grasp the fact that thinking about human nature is important. International Relations scholarship, it should be said, remains skeptical about the relevance of human nature. In spite of a rich seam of thinking on the topic - read Hobbes for example, and you quickly appreciate he was an astute observer of individuals – thinking about human nature is rarely explored in any great depth, save a few cursory observations: that we are aggressive, or inclined to form in and out groups and so on. I remember my old Professor dismissing the category as it in effect explains everything and so in effect it tells us nothing. That might be so, but I think that things are set to change. The time has come to once gain take human nature seriously. Why? Because thanks to the new ´sciences of human nature´ we are now learning extraordinary new things about who, or perhaps we might say “what”we are.

For want of a better term this renewal constitutes something of a “cerebral” turn in social theorizing, in essence because it is a subject focused on the mind, the brain, what goes on in one´s head. We when we engage with the subject we are led in the direction of evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences, not to mention evolutionary theory and gene theory. Ever heard of epigenetics? What about the sciences of the mind? No, well start reading! Collectively, the ideas in these areas represent an exciting development.

So what is being said? Well, each author of course differs, and they don´t all agree, so we need to focus on the particular arguments of each author. If we take someone like Stephen Pinker, in ranging across these traditions, he talks about a new ´biological realism´. This is not the same as the ´realism´ we associate with International Relations thought - though there are some interesting parallels – but it is realistic because  we are able to undertstand homo politicus as he or she is (as opposed to how we would like them to be). And part of this understanding requires an appreciation of how the brain functions. Reading Pinker involves discussions about the regions and operations of the brain: do you know where the amygdala is and what it is purportedly supposed to do? We also need to be sensitive to our evolutionary origins and we need to factor in a genetic dimension to our reflections on who we are.

It is all very interesting and a far cry from the things I was taught in my political theory class as a student. Someone like Pinker is controversial, not least because he overturns many deeply held assumptions about our “nature”. Issues related to our consciousness for example, (that the mind is non-material), or the relative importance of nurture (Locke´s experience) as opposed to nature in explaining motivations raises eyebrows. But in stressing the “better angels” of our nature, he offers an optimistic (though by no means naïve) account of our progress. As we unfold the significance of this strand of thinking, with its emphasis on the anatomy of the individual, we come to realize that many issues in political theory are cast in a new light: questions pertaining to happiness, truth, rationality, how we remember, our moralizing faculty, our sociable-ness, and of course that old nutshell  - our aggressiveness. All in some way are rooted (though not entirely determined) by this biological (and evolutionary) reality. So the metaphor goes, we appear to be “hardwired” in some ways; for instance we “grow” (rather than learn) language and we house a propensity for aggressiveness in different parts of the brain depending on the nature of the situation.  Particularly interesting is the implication that (once again) the natural (hard) sciences have something to contribute to the social sciences, overturning an abiding assumption of a natural separation of these areas! And what is also encouraging to see is that there is a confidence and clarity to this thinking – the spectre of relativism seems less prevalent amongst these thinkers. Finally, the cross-disciplinary nature of the project is refreshing. As students of politics we are familiar with the importance of reading up on history, economics, law and so on, but biology, chemistry, neurology! Suddenly a whole new frontier awaits exploration.

So as students of Conflict and Peace the lesson I draw from this strand of thought is that if we want to reflect on war, or get a better take on what we mean by “agency”, if we want to get to grips with the nature/nurture distinction, or reflect on ideas about innate evil or male aggressiveness - plus a whole lot more - then we should flick through the areas that inspire this thinking. We should look to Wilson´s Sociobiology, or Diamond´s “The World Until Yesterday”, or Kahneman´s “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow”. Basically, we need to read outside the canon! And though the differences with say Kenneth Waltz´s reflections on human nature at first sight appear to be legion, in time one also sees similarities, at least with Realist thought. For example the idea of a foundation (biological realism) or truth or a reality of sorts (humans as they are) that must be taken into account if we are to realistically pursue an option is an outlook shared by both positions.

This is all very celebratory. There are of course limitations. Read a lot of this literature and one is struck by how accommodating it is to the liberal version of politics. Is this coincidental or has it something to do with the fact that much of the thought is being generated in the US? Another, perhaps deeper problem (paradox even) appears to be that any biological realism associated with the sciences of human nature are developing at the very time that advances in the sciences appear to allow for a potential (and profound) re-engineering of this nature. For the first time in human history we are on the threshold of willfully altering our nature, a point recognized in all its profundity by Fukuyama. Perhaps the most significant concern is the idea that this turn represents a new vogue for eugenics. There is something in this, and we must guard against any easy adoption or manipulation of these ideas for distasteful ends.

I mentioned two trends. A second trend  - unsurprising really – is that thinking about ´capitalism´ is back! Marx once again matters; particularly the later Marx and his weighty ruminations in Das Capital. In contrast to the new sciences of human nature that emphasize a biological realism at play, the Marxist inspired position stresses that if we are to properly understand our contemporary situation then we must look anew at the capitalist system for it is this system of accumulation that provides the ´systemic thrust or directionality´ that places us all – as pawns – in a particular spot. One of his great insights (among many) is that we should look beyond the relations of exchange to the underlying relations of production, for it is here that we see the social realm as it “really is”. Though no Marxist, Thomas Piketty´s important recent magnum opus on Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, which examines inequality over the “longue duree”, is set to be a new classic and reflects this growing interest in "Capitalism studies".

Both areas are tremendously exciting, and I will talk about the Marxist strain in a later blog to come, but I wonder, do they compliment one another in any way? There is a congruence – epistemological - that is of interest, and there is a divergence, also interesting that warrants mention. The point about epistemology: things aren´t (entirely) relative, our knowledge seems to once more be anchored in something, something material perhaps, the brain, our neurology, or evolutionary theory or our genes, or the material relations associated with capitalism...

And the divergence? Well there are of course many, but the biological realism of Pinker is essentially optimistic and comfortable with liberalism and capitalism, it does not provide a challenge to the status quo ante as such, indeed his analysis of the key trends that explain a global reduction in the levels of violence place the market at the heart of any positive story to be told. But modern variants of Marxist inspired thought, focused on capitalism, stress the commodification and contamination of nature, its blurring as we engineer anew who we are. There is a relentless and troubling logic at work, driven by the impersonal forces associated with modernity and the market. There is then, a profoundly critical dimension to the analysis and as such it offers an alternative vision of how things should be. But do they relate? Perhaps. Unlike ships in the night, they are not destined to pass one another in silence. If we want to know how to make a more peaceful world, one that promotes individual and collective happiness, and one that lives in a more harmonious relationship with its natural environment, then developing our “better angels” will require of us that we begin by first questioning the context in which we cultivate these propensities. In my view, this will probably require a more comprehensive revisioning of the economic system along the way, just as it requires a fuller and more accurate appreciation of who and what we really are.

We´ll be looking into this next semester, so get reading!

Suggested reading: Roger Trigg, Ideas of Human Nature: A Historical Introduction, 1999
Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature: How Violence has Declined, 2011

Thomas Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, 2014

Visste du at Bjørknes Høyskole tilbyr Norges eneste bachelorgrad i freds- og konfliktstudier? Sjekk ut våre Facebooksider.