Hobbes on the Causes of War

A Disagreement Theory

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3587412
AutoresArash Abizadeh (0000-0002-8271-5194, McGill University, autor correspondente)
Ano2011
Volume105
Fascículo2
Páginas298-315
Data de publicação2011-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003055411000098
OpenAlexW2114736693
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas27
Referências citadas24

Hobbesian war primarily arises not because material resources are scarce; or because humans ruthlessly seek survival before all else; or because we are naturally selfish, competitive, or aggressive brutes. Rather, it arises because we are fragile, fearful, impressionable, and psychologically prickly creatures susceptible to ideological manipulation, whose anger can become irrationally inflamed by even trivial slights to our glory. The primary source of war, according to Hobbes, isdisagreement, because we read into it the most inflammatory signs of contempt. Both cause and remedy are therefore primarily ideological: The Leviathan's primary function is to settle the meaning of the most controversial words implicated in social life, minimize public disagreement, neutralize glory, magnify the fear of death, and root out subversive doctrines. Managing interstate conflict, in turn, requires not only coercive power, but also the soft power required to shape characters and defuse the effects of status competition

Anger · Contempt · Criminology · Epistemology · Glory · Ideology · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Selfishness · Sociology · Subversion · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · War, Ethics, and Justification