ABSTRACT
What is human security? Philosophers have tried for centuries to define who we are. Alexander Pope’s message, “The proper study of mankind is man,” invites us to ask, what is man? Is he a biological creature, driven by appetites and fears for his survival? Is he a social creature, seeking safety and fulfillment in the embrace of collective existence? Or is he primarily a political animal, seeking power and domination at the expense of others? The present study postulates that he is comprised of all three, and his security consists of protections provided within these three layers of existence, which I term biological, social, and political. Man in the unit particular has built his essential humanity as individual (biological), person (social), and citizen (political) – each level of existence has an intrinsic set of protections which aggregate as “security.” We can perceive a fourth level of protection emerging in contemporary history, and its precursor was evident in great empires of the past. This fourth level of protection gives men a kind of global, or at least transnational, security. The Roman citizen, for example, could travel anywhere in the empire comfortable in knowledge that he enjoyed the protection of Rome’s law. Today, globalization promises similar transnational rights and protections, and is expressed in the growing body of international law and organizations. A minority is acquiring a self-defining status of “globizen,” meaning that their orientation transcends national concerns, and their protection is embedded in the new wave of internationalism. A fifth level of existence, giving moral and psychological (but not physical) security is spiritual or religious – the belief that human existence transcends the world of the material senses, and that we
have a higher nature. We can call this level soul, though we must leave it to theologians to define. Not having direct relevance to individual security, we exclude it from human security consideration.
