The Zen master's story and an anatomy of international relations theory

Xiaoming Huang

pp. 222-243

in: Stephen Chan, Peter Mandaville, Roland Bleiker (eds), The zen of international relations, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001

Abstract

It may well be an over-ambitious undertaking to argue that Zen is more than just a convenient escape for those who have genuine distrust in positivist attempts to portray the world in general, and international relations in particular, and found it difficult and often painful to reconcile the consequent disciplinary effects of these attempts with their own learning and insights. But it is the underlying argument of this chapter that, beyond what people usually tend to associate with it, Zen envisions a world larger than the one that positivists would allow themselves and others to recognise and has a clearer vision of the steps and their logical connection in the evolution of one's experience with that world.