honor is in understanding the international politics of the nineteenth century, the origins
of World War I and the Cold War.
Chapter Six takes up the problem of balance and imbalance. It elaborates and
offers empirical evidence in support of the propositions introduced in this chapter about
the different ways social orders based on spirit and appetite unravel and the mechanisms
associated with these processes. It examines the characteristics of phase transitions that
transform either kind of world into one based on fear. It draws on examples from social
life, domestic politics, regional and international politics to show the fundamental
similarity of this process across individual, domestic and regional levels.
Chapter Seven analyses reason, and how, in combination with emotion, it can
promote balance. A reason-dominated world remains an ideal, but all orders that have
any degree of stability incorporate reason, not just as an instrumentality, but as a drive in
its own right. Drawing on the experimental literature in psychology and historical
examples, I show the kinds of positive and synergistic interactions that can link reason
and emotion, they conditions that facilitate these interaction, and how they are
responsible for creating and sustaining balance. The provide the foundation for a critique
of existing theories of cooperation, which I argue, are forced to assume the conditions
they seek to explain. The historical examples I offer in support of my argument highlight
the importance of agency in maintaining and restoring orders at every level of social
interaction. For the Greeks, balance is an expression of justice, and its analysis bring us
to the realization that all social orders ultimately rest on principles of justice.
All worlds are mixed worlds, and Chapter Eight examines the ways in which
spirit, appetite, reason coexist and explores some the consequences for politics. I
elaborate a meta-theory of international relations that bridges the paradigms of standing,
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Convention