The Politics of Humanity

So how is humanitarian concern experienced? What emotional capacities
underpin the possibility of humanitarian impulses? The previous chapter noted the
psychological salience among those most willing to engage in humanitarian action
of perceived bonds of common humanity. But the question remains of the
experiential underpinning of such a bond. Recent normative work in international
political theory has increasingly recognized the importance of establishing such
plausible empirical bases to carry forward the negotiation and expansion of our
spheres of moral concern. For instance, Andrew Linklater recognises that “[it] is
preferable to rest the case for cosmopolitanism on socio-psychological
commitments to empathy and sympathy, which are among the universal pre-
requisites of social life”.^9 I will argue later in this work that it is a mistake to place
humanitarian commitments entirely within the cosmopolitan camp, as
cosmopolitanism is not a necessary component of a humanitarian commitment. But
the majority of cosmopolitan theorists writing in international political theory
certainly present humanitarian commitments as an integral part of their outlook,
and there is a great deal of overlap for our purposes in terms of the work being
done on the character of our fluctuating and plural solidarities. It is certainly
significant that cosmopolitans such as Linklater accept that the ways in which
humans actually experience and form social relationships need to be at the heart of
normative theorizing, and that it is not sufficient to merely dazzle with a series of
logically aligned propositions that any “reasonable” person should accept.
This is all the more vital when it comes to the grisly subject matter of
humanitarianism, which all too often makes a mockery of prior notions of
reasonableness. Surely few would argue that, when people have shown themselves
willing, at the extreme, to risk their lives for others, reason and deliberation are not
at the core of their actual motivations. Indeed, there is now empirical work to back
that up.^10 That is not to say that such processes are not important elements in the
humanitarian conversation. But it is not clear at all that rational argument and
9
Andrew Linklater, "Distant Suffering and Cosmopolitan Obligations", International Politics
44, no. 1 (2007): 221. 10
It is for instance a consistent characteristic of the Rescuer testimonies collected in
Monroe, The Hand of Compassion.