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In this long and wide-ranging book, Richard Ned Lebow delivers a valuable contribution to the study of international relations and international history. He takes positions on deep questions of social and political theory, charts a long overview of world history and its intellectual context, and massively expands the conceptual foundations of IR theory. His is a response to the generalizing claims of IR realists, the ahistorical economism of IR rationalism, and preference for cognitive rather than emotional content in constructivism. For all of that, his book does not argue against "science" as a method nor does it avoid generalization, and it strives to explain a large-scale understanding of the nature of human and social life and to derive from it a theory of international relations. It is an excellent book, serving many purposes: It is a model for how one might draw on philosophic texts to illuminate international relations; it gives a comprehensive alternative view of world politics to all of those focused on interstate relations and the anarchy problematique; and it identifies one way to "bring emotions back in" to IR. Along the way, it invests itself in many fights and takes on many antagonists, and is therefore sure to elicit much controversy and many rejoinders.
The starting point of the book is a conceptualization of human affairs that puts at the front of things the emotions (or motives) of "appetite," "spirit," "reason," and "fear." Emotion is a productive new theme...