1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...

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Classical realism thus cast its lenses upon Hobbes’ natural individual and revealed a highly atomised international system of ever-potentially colliding units like billiard balls to use Wolfer’s (1962, 19) classic metaphor. The State of Nature and the E- Rational Individual The state of nature was a key site for the convergence of realism in IR and rational choice theory in political science, who further elaborated the tools to study the state, locked in as IR’s unit of analysis. This convergence yielded the strong individualism that characterises current rationalist traditions (neorealism and neoliberalist institutionalism; see Keohane 1988). 10 Insofar as these rationalist readings have played an important part in moving attention away from the role of language and sociality in Hobbes’ individual, it is worth considering them here at some length here. 11 The Hobbesian state of nature has provided the foundations for theorizing the rational, selfinterested individual (Neal 1987, Hampton 1986, Brams 1985:139-46; Kavka 1983: 17-18; MacLean 1981:339-51; Gauthier 1977, 1969). Specifically, it is considered as the traditional exemplar of the prisoner’s dilemma situation (Hampton 1986, McLean 1983). Extensive work has thus been undertaken to model the behaviour of Hobbes’s ‘natural man’ [Sic] as the archetypal ‘e-rational’ (economically rational) agent, to borrow Patrick Neal’s (1987) expression. The state of nature, rather than the 10 To be clear, I thus use ‘rationalist’ to mean centered upon the utility-maximizing rational actor, as in Keohane (1989), who included under this term both neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. This is quite distinct from the English School’s usage of the term, as entrenched by Martin Wight’s (1992) three traditions, where ‘rationalism’/the Grotian tradition is opposed to ‘realism’/the Machiavelli or Hobbesian tradition and to ‘revolutionism’/ the Kantian tradition ( see also Vincent 1981, Buzan 2004). Rationalism is thus, the context of my argument, synonymous with realist thought writ wide. 11 These close links are recognized from the other end as well, by rational choice theorists who readily cross over onto IR’s terrain; one recalls here the appendix David Gauthier (1969, 207-212) devotes to ‘Hobbes on International Relations’ (for a critique from within political theory, see Malcolm 2002). 10
Leviathan, lies once again in focus as it showcases the natural individual in her raw, self-interested, utility-maximising form. 12 Patrick Neal in his ‘Hobbes and Rational Choice Theory’ identifies individualism and Instrumentalism as two of the theory’s core tenets, which he traces directly to Hobbes. By ‘individualism’ Neal (1987, 637) means that ‘antecedently defined selves’ stand prior to all ‘sociopolitical relations and institutions’. The individual is therefore the ‘foundation or independent variable’ of rationalist analyses (Neal 1987, 637). These individuals or ‘separate selves’, moreover, ‘are understood to be rationally self-interested maximizers of utility’ (Neal 1987, 637-638). ‘Instrumentalism, then’, Neal (1987, 637) continues, ‘must deny that human beings are in any inherent or intrinsic sense social beings’. Further, ‘instrumentalism seeks to understand relations in terms of selves, not selves in terms of relations’ (Neal 1987, 637). Under these rationalist lenses, cast upon the state of nature, Hobbes becomes, by way of his ‘natural man’ the founder of a ‘radical individualism’ that entrenches the individual and the wide gamut of its behaviour as the legitimate object of political analysis (Hampton 1986). David Gauthier (1977, 139) for his part captures this individualist ontology in the following terms: ‘(…) individuals human beings not only can, but must, be understood apart from society. The fundamental characteristics of men are not products of their social existence….man is social because he is human, not human because he is social. In particular, self-consciousness and language must be taken as conditions, not products, of society.’ It is noteworthy that Hobbes is once again a reference point. Thus Jean Hampton (1986, 6) for her part writes: 12 To the extent that the Leviathan does enter into the analysis, for example in Morton Kaplan (1956, 405), it is to limit any hold it might have on the individual by concluding to the absence of any ‘extraindividual source of obligation’ in Hobbes political treaty. Such conclusion however is premised on Hobbes political subject and his ‘natural man’ being two different persons, rather than two facets of the same individual moving out of the state of nature, as does Hobbes’ natural man. 11
Page 2 and 3: 2001). As the seat of human agency,
Page 4 and 5: foundation for elaborating a type o
Page 6 and 7: ones; to the extent that it is dire
Page 8 and 9: away from the ‘Hobbesian traditio
Page 12 and 13: Gauthier is right to find in Hobbes
Page 14 and 15: he mobilises Searle’s distinction
Page 16 and 17: What did carry over from Hobbes , m
Page 18 and 19: within and beyond the text, it is i
Page 20 and 21: This explains, second, the diachron
Page 22 and 23: The imaginary is also the site wher
Page 24 and 25: or signification. 17 The word does
Page 26 and 27: Part III: The Leviathan as the sign
Page 28 and 29: subject that function as anchoring
Page 30 and 31: in terms of what the Leviathan achi
Page 32 and 33: The symbolic, as we have seen, is t
Page 34 and 35: experience and unimpeded desires. H
Page 36 and 37: Reading Hobbes through Lacan shines
Page 38 and 39: imagination of the discipline’s f
Page 40 and 41: Citations Aron, Raymond (1966 [1962
Page 42 and 43: Hansen, L.(2006), Security As Pract
Page 44 and 45: Morgenthau, Hans J. (1960), Politic
Page 46: Wolfers, Arnold (1962), Discord and

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