The Tikvah Podcast·Episode 10·Jun 24, 2014

Charles Hill – War and Human Consciousness

At our Advanced Institute on “War and Human Nature,” we hosted Yale University diplomat in residence and career foreign minister Charles Hill. Mr. Hill’s session began from the insight that the distinctively human quality – the essence of human nature – is the capacity for reasoned speech. In light of this recognition, Mr. Hill focused on the rhetoric of war and peace that has typified past cultures and our own, analyzing different strategies that have been employed to govern and focus man’s inescapable penchant toward war, and inviting us to wonder how we, who have developed a rhetoric of war’s eradication, can understand the continued threats of bloodshed and battle.