Emergent Humanity

ECR2P co-director, Adrian Gallagher, uses this Fresh Perspectives blog to explore the idea of common humanity through the concept of 'emergence'.

In the aftermath of Rwanda and Srebrenica, Kofi Annan captured the mood of the time when he asked, ‘If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?’ (cited in ICISS, VII). The problem is that such claims often present humanity as a self-evident truth that need no further explanation, which does nothing to change or challenge more critical views (see Bain 2007).

Alexander Herzen once boldly declared, ‘The word ‘humanity’ is repugnant; it expresses nothing definite and only adds to the confusion of all remaining concepts a sort of piebald demi-god. What sort of unit is understood by the word ‘humanity'?’ (1982, 523). Whilst this pre-dates the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) by over one hundred years, he certainly does not stand alone. Famously, Carl Schmitt argued, ‘whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat’ (cited in Luban 2010, 464) and essentially, this logic underwrites the Realist concern that RtoP action is often nothing more than a ‘Trojan horse’ in that political elites speak with moral tongues whilst pursuing ulterior motives (see Bellamy, 2015, 112 – 132). All of which begs the question, how should we think about humanity?

The RtoP discourse has predominantly focused on states. This is somewhat understandable because the 2005 agreement represents a state-centric attempt to institutionalise a logic of appropriate behaviour aimed at ridding the world of genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes. Yet the focus on states has left the concept of humanity overlooked and undertheorized. Notable exceptions beings Wheeler (2005), Hilpold (2012), Gallagher and Brown (2016) and Jarvis (2018). With this in mind, I would like to take this Fresh Perspectives opportunity to put forward a new way of thinking about humanity.

Emergent Humanity

To offer a fresh perspective on thinking about humanity, I use the concept of ‘emergence’. Although not common in International Relations literature, ‘emergence’ as a field of study has gained ground in psychology, sociology, and philosophy (Sawyer 2005). Such research calls for IR scholars to engage more with interdisciplinary study as well as discussions of ‘emergence’ in the work of scholars such as J. S. Mill, C. D. Broad, and É. Durkheim. The latter captures much of the sentiment here when he states, ‘society is not a mere sum of individuals’, cited in Sawyer (2002, 231).

Against this backdrop, I want to consider whether humanity as the whole is not merely more, but actually different from, the sum of its parts (human beings). Here I draw on More is Different (1972) by physicist Philip Warren Anderson. Acknowledging Marx’s notion that ‘quantitative differences become qualitative ones’, he asks us to consider how the accumulation of particles can take on a qualitatively different value to that found in each individual particle. To illustrate this he uses the example of crystals, ‘built from a substrate of atoms and space according to laws which express the perfect homogeneity of space, the crystal suddenly and unpredictably displays an entirely new and very beautiful symmetry’ (1972, 395). In other words, the value of the crystal cannot be reduced down to its individual parts. On one hand, the crystal could not exist without the atoms within it, but on the other, if one held each atom individually one would not experience the value of the crystal as a whole. Hence, the title ‘more is different’ captures the idea that the crystal has an independent, qualitatively different value to that of its atoms. Utilising this logic, I would argue that humanity cannot be explained through a reductionist focus on individual human beings because very much like the crystal, humanity as whole, takes on a qualitative different value. Unlike the crystal, however, humanity is not presented here as a thing of beauty or something fixed. It is a forever changing process that embodies a ubiquitous value.

Consider Elias’ explanation of how civilizing and decivilizing processes (even if he does not mention the latter in this quote) have shaped human history.

It is simple enough: plans and actions, the emotional rational impulses of individual people, constantly interweave in a friendly or hostile way. The basic tissue resulting from many single plans and actions of men can give rise to changes and patterns that no individual person has planned or created. From this interdependence of people arises an order sui generis, an order compelling and stronger than the will and reason of the individuals composing it. It is this order of interweaving human impulses and strivings, this social order, which determines the course of historical change; it underlies the civilizing process (cited in Krieken 1998, 52).

First, the idea of friendly and hostile connections captures the idea that (unlike the crystal) humanity is not some idealistic beautiful output. Instead, it is an on-going interplay of human interaction over space and time. Second, humanity is a blind process in that it is not the conscious design of any individual, community, or culture. This gives weight to idea that because no individual person, culture, state, or community, created humanity, it is a mistake to reduce the value of humanity to the sum of its parts.  After all, one cannot understand a crystal by looking at an atom.

Think of the world prior to humans as a blank canvass. Now consider that each individual leaves its own mark upon the canvass, a paint stroke if you will. Over time, as individuals formed communities and cultures that communicated with one another, the paint strokes began to represent more than just the individuals themselves. To return to Anderson, an increasing population does not simply represent ‘more’, it represents ‘different’. The patchwork of paint strokes represents something thicker than a reductionist focus on individual/thin paint strokes. The idea of a painted canvass (as opposed to a crystal) aims to distance the idea of humanity as an object, and instead, understand it as a continual forever changing process. I provide a visual representation of this in the title image above.

Humanity is not simply the quantitative accumulation of every human being in the world right now, it is different, and has an ever-changing structure that continues to shape the agents within it. This is where its value lies. The image therefore should be understood as representing a snapshot of humanity. Since humanity itself is not a finished product, no piece of art can represent it in its entirety.  To some extent this is captured in Gaita’s understanding of a common humanity in which he states ‘our humanity passes through us like the thread of a needle. Everything we do is stitched with its colour’ (2000, 283). The statement raises an interesting structure agency dynamic in that it implies that the structure of humanity passes through, and this author would add, shapes the agents involved and their actions in turn shape the structure of humanity. Essentially, as humanity’s parts (human beings) die out, they are replaced with new but different parts and it is a mistake therefore to think of humanity as merely the sum of its parts.

To paraphrase Wendt, humanity is what humans make of it. Whilst we can never measure, or know, what we lost when groups were rounded up and killed in Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, Myanmar, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan, to name a few. This fresh perspective helps us pause and consider the implications that this loss has not just for the individuals and groups involved but for the emergence of humanity. Ken Booth’s claim that ‘humanity has been invented and reinvented through history’ (2014, 119; also 2007, 379–380) is clearly in tune with this thinking. Providing an apt summary, as well as a response to Herzen, he claims

Humanity is both a broad and non-static concept.  The best answer to the old question, ‘What is humanity?’  is therefore: ‘It is too soon to say.’  Humanity is what humans make of the potentialities immanent in our natural sociality regarding the political, social, economic, and cultural potentialities on earth (2016, 3).

It is important therefore to reassess the foundations upon which the RtoP is built. Is it right to suggest that the RtoP sets out to defend a common humanity? Or alternatively, should we view humanity as an on-going process and situate the RtoP within this? It is not about what we are defending but what we are creating. Humanity is the heir of all ages.

For further discussion on how this understanding relates to the Responsibility to Protect see, Gallagher, A. 2016. Conceptualizing humanity in the English School. International Theory: a journal of international politics, law and philosophy. 8(2), pp. 341-364

Dr. Adrian Gallagher, University of Leeds, UK

 

Bibliography

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Gaita, R. 2000. A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love Truth and Justice. New York: Routledge.

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Jarvis, S. 2018. Assessing the Responsibility to Protect’s motivational capacity: The role of humanity. Journal of International Political Theory. 14. 1. 107-124.

Wheeler, N. J. 2005. ‘A Victory for Common Humanity? The Responsibility to Protect after the 2005 World Summit.’ Journal of International Law and International Relations. 2(1):95-105.