|
|
|
|
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Taoism and the concept of global security
by Ralph Pettman
Abstract
Global security is typically discussed in the rationalist terms used to articulate contemporary modernism. To restrict analysis to such articulations, however, is to accept the limits and distortions that this way of being and knowing creates. This article seeks to transgress these limits, and to compensate for these distortions. It does so by discussing the concept of global security from a Taoist perspective. Initially, it maps what global security means to rationalists. Then it discusses what Taoism entails, and compares Taoist and rationalist epistemologies. Then it compares Taoist and rationalist thinking about global security, defined first in more general, 'human' security terms, and second in more particular, politico-strategic terms. It concludes by highlighting the significance of the Taoist concept of wu-wei ('no unnatural action'), and of Taoism as one way in which to contextualise the rationalist construction of global security.