The course aims to introduce the key assumptions of the international relations theory as a part of social science and as an analytic tool, focusing on the problems of war and peace, foreign policy decision-making, etc. The course combines historic approach and analysis of the modern political problems. The historic part shows the evolution of the international relations theory from being a part of political philosophy to its emergence as a special branch of political science, which is essential to understand the key ideas of the IR science. The lectures also include broad outline of the modern concepts and debates in the context of the contemporary political problems, such as rise of China and other emerging powers, threat of terrorism, US-Russia confrontation, etc. The lectures of the two outstanding Russian scholars and political analysts – Timofey Bordachev and Dmitry Suslov - cover such fields as the problems of international security and conflict resolution, international economic relations, foreign policy decision-making, global governance, the role of power in the IR.
Christian roots
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From the course by National Research University Higher School of Economics
Understanding International Relations Theory
18 оценки
National Research University Higher School of Economics
18 оценки
From the lesson
Origins of Liberalism
The lecture introduces the students to the second grand paradigm of international relations: liberalism. What if the international politics is not a static world of fights and survival, but a permanent movement to a better world? The origins of the new approach lies in the age of Enlightenment and even earlier - in the very core ideas of Christianity.
Meet the Instructors
Timofei BordachevAssociate professor
Department of international relations
Dmitrii SuslovSenior Lecturer
Department of international relations, HSE
Hello, and thank you for joining back our course on International Relations Theory.
My name is Timofey Bordachev from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
During our previous conversation,
we have touched on the beginnings of the realist tradition in IR theory.
We learned that the traces of realist tradition go very,
very deep into the history,
to the ancient Greece.
We learned about the work of the Fukuda's,
and about other philosophers
who belong to the Realist tradition in International Relations.
We learned about Thomas Gob's,
we learned about the idea of liberalform,
a certain superstate to which people surrounded part of their freedoms,
in order to achieve security.
And we learned that, for a very very significant part of the history,
realist tradition has dominated the thinking about international relations.
Well, there always has been alternative to the realist tradition,
and this alternative has been called Liberal Brush International Relations.
Our lecture today, is about the very beginnings of liberal tradition,
which goes from the Christian philosophy,
to the ideas of the early Renaissance,
and early enlightenment in Europe.
So, the beginnings of liberal tradition,
we find in the Christian books.
The Christian roots are very important social development for the liberal tradition.
Christianity, which emerged as
the religion in the Middle East nearly 2000 years ago developed,
and spread all over the world.
But it has started in Europe,
and the first important thinkers about
what Christians think about international relations,
lived in Europe, where we'll learn their names today.
Christianity gave birth to fundamentally different morals and ideals,
comparing with the ancient tradition.
But first of all, what is most important, is generative,
broad and moral doctrine,
proposing peace and humility as a fundamental virtue.
So for ancient philosophers and thinkers like Fukuda for example,
the morality in international relations,
as well as morality as a factor of the relations between individuals,
actually did not exist.
For the Christians, the situation changed completely.
For them, the morality,
the obedience of the rules proposed and
brought by the Jesus Christ and by the Christian religion.
This obedience was the most important virtue of the individual.
And they believed this, exactly this obedience must be
the guiding principle for the policy of the states.
Moreover, the Christian doctrine assumes the existence of ideal state of human soil,
and therefore of society.
Christians as liberals after them believed that each individual can be changed,
each individual can become better because of his beliefs,
the society can become better,
and that makes sense working on improvement of the society.
And if the society can be better,
the international relations can be better,
because better societies will better interact between them.
If the states are good,
they don't need to fight between them.
And then we foresee the ideas of Immanuel Kant as a continuation of the very beginnings,
or the liberal tradition into Christian doctrine.
Moreover, Christianity may be considered as
a spiritual founder of a new intellectual movement,
which brought a strong alternative to the classical tradition.
I must add, it was also the first alternative.
Christian historiosophy brought the idea of dynamic history,
which develops from a certain beginning,
creation of the World, to its end.
Liberal paradigm thus, as a continuation of the Christian philosophy,
is based on the linear idea of permanent advancing of international relations,
in attempt to achieve an eternal peace.
This view, the views of Christian philosophers,
influenced medieval and modern political thinkers,
making them to develop their own models of Kingdom of
heavens in domestic and international realms.
So, the message of early approaches,
early liberal and Christian approaches to the international relations,
was mainly making the kingdom of heavens on the earth,
changing life on the earth
because it can be changed according to the Christian approaches,
and it should be changed as something which is important to do in order to please God.
One of the first thinkers from the Christian tradition who is interesting
for us when we touch upon
the beginnings of the liberal paradigm in international relations,
was a famous priest Saint Augustine,
who lived in the fourth century nearly 1,600 years ago.
He was a Christian philosopher and theologians,
so it means that he did not only stop the study of
the Bible with the other Christian sources,
he was also thinking about it,
he was trying to develop a generalized idea about how the society,
at how relationships between societies must be constructed
based exactly on one of the ideas he brings from the Christian religion,
and from his Christian theology.
He is considered to be one of the father founders of the church,
but also one of the first important thinkers in politics and international relations.
First of all, he applied the Christian doctrine
towards explaining the behavior of individuals.
Later, he did it towards the behavior of the states.
Saint Augustine wrote in his work,
the city of God, published in 1470.
He wrote, they who have waged war in obedience
to the divine command or in conformity with His laws, meaning God,
have represented in their persons the public justice or the wisdom of government,
and in this capacity have put to death wicked men.
Such persons, St.Augustine writes,
have by no means violated the commandment,
you should not kill.
So for him, the just reason for war,
the just reason for killing was the obedience to the commandments of God.
So St. Augustine was in very beginning of the Christian and later liberal explanation,
and the concept of the Just War.
Christianity gave birth to doctrine of just wars.
Unlike modern assumption of just conflict as,
we know it now based on law,
christian thinkers considered a just war to be
based on morals and the God's commandments.
Let us not forget that in the classical tradition in ancient Greece,
the war did not need any ideological explanation.
The conflict of interests,
the conflict for the land for women,
like it has happened during war,
wan't very good enough explanation for war.
Christians went much farther.
They wanted to have a moral ideological explanation of any violent action,
which one people put upon the other people.
St. Augustine in his work,
The City of God wrote,
but say they, the wise man will wage just wars.
As if he would not all the rather lament
the necessity of just wars if he remembers that he's a man,
for if they were not just he would not wage them,
and would therefore be delivered from all wars.
The continuation of this thinking,
the continuation of the Christian concept,
we find in the work of Erasmus of Rotterdam.
Well, we see that he lived more than 1000 years after Saint Augustine.
But there is a good explanation for this gap.
So basically, the Christian tradition as the Christian Europe proposed
a universal tradition which did not presume that equality of their lords,
and equality of the Kings between them,
but also it did presume that absolute inequality was a result of the Roman pope.
So this doctrine could not hope to establish that philosophy although
relationships based on the equality in political and ideological and in power terms.
So, Erasmus of Rotterdam lived in the Netherlands,
that time still the colony of the Spanish Empire.
He was a Christian thinker, and at the same time, Renaissance humanist.
And his difference from St. Augustine was very simple,
he considered to be any war in the natural act or behavior between countries.
Famous as one of the first intellectual or just of pacifism,
Erasmus of Rotterdam went for the concept which declares any war not good,
any war not be in favor of the God.
And he wrote, war is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
And this idea is one of
the basic idea of liberal approach to the international relations,
which we'll launch our next conversation.
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