van Aaken and Simsek on The Situated Universality of Emotions, Cognition, and International Law: A Biocultural Analogy

Anne van Aaken and Betül Simsek, both of the University of Hamburg Law School, have published The Situated Universality Of Emotions, Cognition, And International Law: A Biocultural Analogy. Here is the abstract.

Debates about universality are central to both emotions in affective science and international law. Psychology and neuroscience ask whether emotions are universal or culturally constructed; international law confronts a parallel tension between claims to universal validity and historical and cultural contingency. This article uses the emotion-cognition nexus to develop a new theoretical account of universality in international law. Contemporary affective science increasingly challenges a binary opposition between biological universality and cultural construction, with biocultural approaches conceptualizing emotions as emerging from interactions between shared biological capacities and cognitive, social, and cultural processes. The chapter argues that international law can be understood through a similar framework. Its normative development, interpretation, and legitimacy emerge from interactions between broadly shared emotional-cognitive dispositions and their socially and culturally mediated articulation. On this basis, the article develops the concept of situated universality: grounded in common human emotional-cognitive capacities while remaining contingent in its institutional, historical, and cultural expression.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.