Human Nature, Peace, and War

This essay calls upon Machiavelli and Guicciardini (among others) on the question of human nature and the human aptitude for aggression. Medieval men and women tended to perceive interstate relations in the same framework as interpersonal relations. States thus had a human psychology, and interstate relations were conducted on this basis. Friendship and kinship could bind states together, and breaches of trust could tear them apart. The Renaissance started to put such a model into question, at the same time questioning the rationality/emotionality of human nature within interstates relations.