2 - Human nature and state motivation

Summary

If anarchy and egoism are the central features of realism, it is a largely arbitrary decision whether we begin our more detailed discussion with one or the other. I have chosen to start with realist analyses of human nature and state motivation, in part because structural realists suggest that they are unnecessary. I will argue, however, that motives matter centrally to all realist theories. Furthermore, the standard accounts of biological and structural realists are surprisingly similar and profoundly inadequate.

Fear, honor, and interest

Nearly all of our realist paradigms place fear, honor, and interest at the core of human nature and state motivation. As we saw in chapter 1, Thucydides' Athenian envoys at the Congress of Lacedaemon seek to justify their empire by arguing that “it was not a very remarkable action, or contrary to the common practice of mankind, if we accepted an empire that was offered to us, and refused to give it up under the pressure of three of the strongest motives, fear, honor, and interest” (I.76). Hobbes, in Leviathan, uses remarkably similar language. “In the nature of man, we find three principall causes of quarrell. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory” (ch. 13, par. 6). Machiavelli likewise speaks of “the things that lead men to the end that each has before him, that is, glories and riches” and of “the distribution of honors and of property than which man esteems nothing more highly” (P25[2], DI.37[2]; compare DIII.6[4, 5]). And one of Machiavelli's best-known maxims states that “it is much safer to be feared than loved” (P17[3]; compare DIII.21[2]).