Christianity, Buddhism and the theories of international relations : a study of alternative perceptions

Abstract

Pursuit of knowledge in the Western Social Sciences, and the discipline of International Relations within that broader category, has traditionally been conducted within a positivist framework, with its epistemological base being largely confined to empirical knowledge. Accordingly, research and theory construction within the discipline remains essentially confined to the issues, explanations, prescriptions, and methodologies which suggest themselves from within its own narrow epistemology, with alternatives deriving from extraneous sources of knowledge, particularly non-material ones, being discredited, or more generally, neglected. Perhaps the most profound effect of positivism has been the extent to which its imperatives have dehumanised mainstream International Relations theory. In the place of human persons, and human agency, theoreticians have inserted the abstractions of states, classes and systems, and the Imperatives of power and conflict; in the place of a unitary humanity, dissociative states or classes with competing interests; and in the place of human values, a claim to objective value-neutrality. However, in the world which exists outside the intellectually rarefied one of the mainstream theorist - the world in which human beings live out their individual and collective lives - it is obvious that positivism and the image of international reality which it dictates does not reign supreme. Consequently, it is a world which the mainstream theories of International Relations are quite unable to perceive, let alone explain, from within their own limited body of knowledge. Any attempt at a comprehensive understanding of the world and its potentialities therefore necessitates a movement beyond the narrow confines of mainstream epistemology, and, while a drawing from the funds of knowledge contained In the other Social Sciences can do much to overcome existing theoretical and explanatory inadequacy, there remains yet a further rich source of untapped knowledge in the wisdom and insight which the great religious traditions of our world have built up over the millenniums of their existence. It is a wisdom and a source of knowledge which contains alternative perceptions of human reality and international relations within it, and identifies alternative possibilities for the future of our world. Moreover, the reservoir of knowledge contained in the minds of the great religious traditions is the heritage of humanity, and is too rare and precious to ignore. The central aim of this dissertation is to identify the alternative images of international reality contained within the religious traditions of Christianity and Buddhism, and to elucidate the areas in which they challenge mainstream conceptions. For example, the religions profoundly believe that international relations are moral and valuational relations between human beings, thus replacing the dissociative world of the mainstream theoretician with an associative image of one humanity sharing one world and possessed of a universal, human common good. Perhaps most importantly, Christianity and Buddhism insist that we are not doomed to a perpetual struggle for power, nor for change via class struggle. Rather, they hold out an optimistic and empowering image in which people are reinstated as the fulcrum of all IVinternational activity, and are seen to hold within themselves the power to change the world via peaceful means, and for the betterment of all.In recent years Normative theorists, situated on the periphery of the discipline, have generated an assault against the fortifications of the mainstream, the substance of which shows a greater affinity with the person-centrism and associative nature of the Christian and Buddhist image. However, not only have they, as yet, failed to broach the entrenched position of the mainstream, but their failure to root their theories in values whose source and justification is expressly identified, leaves them in a weakened position. Yet, their very existence is of inherent importance as it represents at least the appearance of the first slight cracks in positivism's domination of the discipline. A 'marriage' of the insights of Normative International Relations theory with the profoundly human insights of the great religious traditions of Christianity and Buddhism would do much to illuminate that area of human activity and, at the same time, assist in reversing the foreclosure on human potentialities which pervades the mainstream.