Abstract
The Post-War rise in importance of the individual in international political theory, as evidenced by the development of the international human rights regime, International Criminal Law and theories of global justice, has, paradoxically, been accompanied by an highly critical approach to the concept of human nature. Criticisms of human nature largely rest on the association of the concept of with social Darwinism, racism, sexism and eugenics, but, understood properly and at the right level of generality, the concept of human nature need not attract such undesirable, pseudo-scientific bedfellows. The modern science of evolutionary psychology is in the process of changing our understanding of the social implications of our genetic inheritance, and social and political theorists ought not to resist this change, and international relations scholars should not leave the field to realist scholars. Premature generalisations based on the findings of evolutionary psychology should certainly be resisted, but so should blanket rejections of the new knowledge. The task for international political theorists is to find a way of integrating the findings of the new human sciences into a humane understanding of the human animal.
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Notes
The suggestion that the UP are necessarily heterosexual is unfortunate — had Brown been writing 20 years later, I suspect he would have referred to winning the attention of sexual partners.
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Acknowledgements
A much earlier version of some of the ideas presented in this essay appears in ‘Human Rights and Human Nature’ in Holder and Reidy (2013). This essay was originally presented as the Keynote Address at the 9th Central and East European International Studies Association Convention, Krakow, Poland, 20 September 2012. I have had the advantage of very helpful criticisms from three readers, but in the interests of stimulating debate, I have left the body of the argument unchanged, making only marginal clarifications and corrections; more than is usually the case, all errors are indeed my responsibility.
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Brown, C. ‘Human nature’, science and international political theory. J Int Relat Dev 16, 435–454 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2013.17
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/jird.2013.17