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Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2020

Bahar Rumelili Open the ORCID record for Bahar Rumelili [Opens in a new window]
Bahar Rumelili*
Affiliation:
Department of International Relations, Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise to the state of nature. The first section of the article turns to existentialist philosophy to explicate anxiety's relation to fear, multiple forms, and link to agency. The second section draws on some recent interpretations to outline the role that anxiety plays in Hobbesian thought. Finally, I argue that an ontological security (OS) perspective that is enriched by insights from existentialism provides the most appropriate theoretical venue for integrating anxiety into IR theory and discuss the contributions of this approach to OS studies and IR theory.

Keywords

fear/anxiety distinctionuncertaintystate of naturesecuritizationradical agency
Type
Symposium: Anxiety, Fear, and Ontological Security in World Politics: Edited by Catarina Kinnvall and Jennifer Mitzen
Information
International Theory , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 257 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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