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First image revisited: human nature, original sin and international relations

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It is not because it is too profound, but rather because it is too uncomfortable, that you shy away from the truth

Paul Tillich

Abstract

In Waltz’s famous classification, human nature’s propensity to evil is catalogued as a first-image causal explanation of war. Ever since, human nature explanations of conflict have been attacked for resting on metaphysical assumptions and a priori pessimism. This paper argues that modern conceptions about the inherent wickedness of human nature or, equally, reductionist sociobiological explanations about its hard-wired conflict-proneness are impoverished secularised versions of Christian anthropological assumptions grounded in the doctrine of original sin. Itself a widely contested dogma, in its Augustinian formulation it was closely connected with a soteriological perspective, that is, a defence of its status as a corollary of the doctrine that all human beings are equally in need of salvation in Jesus Christ. However, its use was never entirely disconnected from the purposes of theodicy and Christian apologetics striving to reconcile the existence of a benevolent and omnipotent God with the reality of evil and suffering in the world. It is this latter legacy – associated with the explanation of suffering and evil in the world but stripped of its salvific eschatological content – that is picked up by secularist theorisations of human nature which tend to reduce the paradox of original sin to the parody of man’s evil nature.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Nick Rengger, Tony Lang and the participants in a St. Andrews Workshop on ‘Political Theologies of the International’ (May 2015) for comments, and the Russell Trust Development Award for funding the event.

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  1. School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, Arts Faculty Building, The Scores, St Andrews, KY16 9AX, Scotland

    Vassilios Paipais

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  1. Vassilios Paipais
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Correspondence to Vassilios Paipais.

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Paipais, V. First image revisited: human nature, original sin and international relations. J Int Relat Dev 22, 364–388 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-016-0072-y

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