Religion and (inter-)national politics: On the heuristics of identities, structures, and agents

Alternatives

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 113-140

  Kratochwil, Friedrich ^a  

^a EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE   (Italy)

Author keywords

Boundaries; Conflict; Reconciliation; Religion; Self

Indexed keywords

EID: 23244453675     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540503000201     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Samuel Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations?"Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 22-49.
2. On Iran and the Islamic revolution, see John Foran, ed., A Century of Revolution: Social Movements in Iran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994);
3. John Esposito, ed., The Iranian Revolution: Its Global Impact (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1990);
4. Mansoor Moaddel, Class Politics and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993);
5. Gene Burns, "Ideology, Culture, and Ambiguity: The Revolutionary Process in Iran,"Theory and Society 25 (June 1996): 349-388;
6. Said A. Arjomand, "Iran's Islamic Revolution in Comparative Perspective,"World Politics 38 (April 1986): 383-441.
7. Gary Sick, All Fall Down: America's Tragic Encounter with Iran (New York: Random House, 1985);
8. William Sullivan, Mission to Iran (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981).
9. On the general problematic, see Henry Kissinger, A World Restored (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964);
10. Stephen Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996);
11. Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999).
12. See, for example, the effort of the German theologian Hans Küng to formulate a Weltethos that would mobilize the peacemaking potential of religions transcending their denominational boundaries; in Hans Küng and Karl Kuschel, eds., Erklärung zum Weltethos: Die Deklaration des Parlaments der Weltreligionen (München-Zürich: Piper, 1993);
13. and Hans Küng, Weltethos für Weltpolitik und Weltwirtschaft (München-Zürich: Piper, 1997).
14. See Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson, eds., Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
15. Mervyn Love, Peace-building through Reconciliation in Northern Ireland (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1995).
16. I base my argument here mainly on the writings of Rudolf Otto, Ernst Cassirer, and Rene Girard. See Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor and the Divine and Its Relationship to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923);
17. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale, 1955);
18. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
19. For a recent treatment of ideas as private representations, see Judy Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993);
20. for an incisive critique of this position, see Alex Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. chaps. 2 and 4.
21. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols., trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper & Row 1969), p. 292.
22. William Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 31.
23. Eric Voegelin, Political Religions, in Modernity Without Restraints, vol. 5 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Manfred Henning (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).
24. Karl Loewith, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1953).
25. On this conceptual revolution, see the contributions of Reinhard Koselleck in his Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Times (Cambridge; MIT Press, 1985).
26. See, for example, Francis Fukuyama's argument about the "end of history,"which he equates with the ascendancy of democratic ideals, in Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992);
27. for the subsequent controversy, see Timothy Burns, ed., After History? Francis Fukuyama and His Critics (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994);
28. and Arthur Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, and Richard Zinnman, eds., If History Is Not Over, Where Is It Going?: Reflections on Progress and Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994).
29. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
30. See, for example, the discussion on "ideas"in IR analysis in Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1993);
31. see also the important criticism of this approach by John Ruggie, "What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge,"International Organization 52 (Fall 1998): 885-886.
32. See Alex Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chap. 2.
33. For a wider exposition of this approach to legal theory, see Mark Kerman, A Guide to Critical Legal Studies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987);
34. and Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
35. See esp. the detailed account of successful conflict-resolution practices and their religious and psychological underpinnings in Marc Gopin, Between Eden and Armageddon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), parts 2 and 3.
36. Ted R. Gurr, "Minorities, Nationalists, and Ehnopolitical Conflict,"in Chester Crocker et al., eds., Managing Global Chaos (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1996): 53-77;
37. see also Mark Jüergensmeyer, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
38. See Moaddel, note 2, intro. and chap. 5; see also Burns, note 2.
39. R. Scott Appelby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion Violence, and Reconciliation (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 4.
40. Roy Licklider, "Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945-1993,"American Political Science Review 89 (September 1995): 681-690.
41. Otto, note 8, pp. 12f.
42. Emile Durkheim, Sociologie et Philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), pp. 99ff.
43. Cassirer, note 8.
44. Cassirer, note 8, 2:60f.
45. See David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Charles W. Hendel (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1957), sec. 1.
46. For the limits of this approach, see my "The Limits of Contract,"European Journal of International Law 5, no. 4 (1994): 465-491;
47. the article is reprinted in Cecilia Lynch and Michael Loriaux, eds., Law and Moral Action in World Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), chap. 2.
48. For a sustained treatment of the consequences of this conceptual move for our understanding of politics, see R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
49. For an illuminating discussion of these points in respect to social theory, see Alex Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, chap. 2.
50. John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (London: Penguin, 1995).
51. See, for example, Julia Kristeva's argument in Nations Without Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 28, quoting approvingly Montesquieu's dictum: "If I knew something useful to myself and detrimental to my family, I would reject it from my mind. If I knew something useful to my family but not to my homeland, I would try to forget it. If I knew something useful to my homeland and detrimental to Europe, or else useful to Europe and detrimental to Mankind, I would consider it a crime."Obviously, this quote must sound better in French than in translation, but one wonders why a psychoanalyst who is familiar with the conflict of duties, as exemplified in tragedy (and here Antigone best represents the problems of familial duties vs. those to the larger community) so readily accepts a piece of eighteenth-century cosmopolitan rhetoric whose explanatory and normative power is (unfortunately) belied by all subsequent European history.
52. See the telling criticisms along these lines by Walker Connor in his "Ethno-nationalism in the First World: The Present Historical Perspective,"in Walker Connor, Ethno-nationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 7.
53. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976).
54. For a recent overview on these problems, see Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach, Polities: Authority, Identities, and Change (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
55. See Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998); see esp. vol. 2.
56. Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).
57. See, for example, Deutero Isaiah: He who slaughters an ox is like him who kills a man; He who sacrifices a lamb, like him who breaks a dog's neck: He who presents a cereal offering, like him who offers swine's blood; He who makes a memorial offering of frankincense, like him who blessed an Idol. These have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations; I also will choose affliction for them, and bring their fears upon them; Because when I called they did not listen, but did what was evil in my eyes, And chose that in which I did not delight. See also Amos 5: I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and cereal offerings I will not accept them, and the peace offering of your fatted bests I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your song: to the melody of your haps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
58. See for a general discussion of the context of desire and wish fulfillment as an individuating force, Sigmund Freud, Totem und Tabu (Leipzig: Int. Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1925); esp. "Animismus, Magie, und Allmacht der Gedanken."
59. For a good treatment of these problems and the debunking of the myth of the "natural goodness"of primitive man, see Robert Edgerton, Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony (New York: Free Press, 1993).
60. Cassirer, note 8, 2:158.
61. Albrecht Dieterich, Nekya, 3rd ed. (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969).
62. See Plato, Apology, 18b-19e.
63. Plato, Republic, 617d.
64. Heretics are in the classical conceptions not infidels in that they adhere to the wrong creed or deny the existence of God; their error consists in (strategically) selecting parts of the creed that fit their needs.
65. Appelby, note 23, p. 91.
66. Michael. A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed: Religions and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 123.
67. Maulana Sayyid Abdul Ala Maududu (1903-1979) was an Indian Muslim of Hyderabad who excelled as orator, politician, and systematic thinker of Muslim fundamentalism. He was the founder of the South Asian Islamic organization Jamaat al Islam, but attained his importance by elaborating on the implications of Islam for economics, law, and politics (Islamic economics, Islamic politics, Islamic constitution, etc.). He was also one of the most apparent sources for the Sunni fundamentalist group in Egypt (the Islamic Brotherhood) that was founded by Hassna al Banna but whose most influential ideologue was Sayid Qutb (1906-1965), who developed the fundamentalist version of the jihad.
68. Here the appropriate analogy would be Saint Augustine's notion of the civitas Dei, which cannot be identified with the existing church when conceived as a congregation; rather, within that assembly, they are those who are members of the spiritual transtemporal community and those who are actually simply "children of the world,"even if they hold important positions within the group (sunt extra qui sunt intra). However, we should also note the purely political character of the remedies sought by the Islamic Brotherhood, which is quite at odds with Augustin's "spiritualist"position.
69. As quoted in Appelby, note 23, p. 93.
70. Rabbi Abraham Isaak Kook (1865-1935) saw in the return of the Jews to the Holy Land the dawn of the messianic era.
71. See the fascinating account by Samuel Heilman, "Guides for the Faithful: Contemporary Zionist Rabbis,"in R. Scott Appelby, ed., Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 328-362.
72. For a further exploration of this point on how the normative realm is through institutions connected with observational facts, see my Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), esp. chaps. 1, 3, and 4.
73. See Said Arjomand, "Ideological Revolution in Shiism,"in Said Arjomand, Authority and Political Culture in Shiism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1987); see also Moaddel, note 2, chap. 7.
74. Here, however, one also should be careful since "traditions"are not simply the old customs that are being handed over from generation to generation, but are usually inventions, often of quite recent origin, as, for example, was the "traditional folk costume"in Bavaria that gained rapid popularity in the 1970s and that, in most of its versions, has little to do with the customary pieces of clothing that were formerly worn by peasants and the lower classes. On this point, see Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
75. Bruce Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt against the Modern World (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989).
76. Appelby, note 23, p. 88.
77. Gopin writes: and conflict generation. . . . From Islamic radical groups, to religious Jewish settlers, from suicide bombers dying for Allah's great name to Yeshiva trained assassin killing a head of state, all of the energy behind the destruction of the peace process comes from religion. Yet almost none of the analysis, conflict resolution strategies, and foundation grants have gone towards addressing this issue. . . . The gap between the reality of religion and conflict and the lack of response to it by peacemakers, both governmental and non-governmental . . . suggests a deep fear and aversion to this entire phenomenon on the part of the government bureaucrats, journalists, and secular intellectuals and activists. They seem to unconsciously wish that it would go away so that everyone could continue unperturbed in simplistic diplomatic or conflict resolution paradigms. -Gopin, note 20, p. 37.
78. See Robert Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 134.