Beyond ontological substantialism: Theorizing humanist relationality through the anthropocosmic perspective of Chinese humanism

Global international relations (IR) disciplinary framework recognizes indigenous cultural resources for the development of homegrown IR theoretical frameworks. Thus, this article theorizes Humanist Relationality to challenge and help shift beyond mainstream IR’s established paradigm of ontological substantialism. We theorize humanist relationality through the anthropocosmic perspective of Chinese Humanism, deriving our inspirations specifically from ancient China’s three humanistic philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism, and Yin-and-Yang philosophy. We adopt an interpretivist methodology to trace the humanistic discourses of ancient Chinese philosophers, applying their philosophical wisdom to conceptualize and generalize on the subject matter of IR. The theoretical framework of humanist relationality is anchored in three foundational pillars. First, humanist relationality is formulated on the alternative ontological foundation of anthropocosmic humanism, to planetarily spatialize the realm of social world as a holistically integral world of oneness. Second, we propound humanist relationality’s core concepts as: humanist state sovereignty, humanist global governance, humanist planetary wholesomeness. Third, we put forth humanist relationality’s defining values of humaneness, moderateness, co-creativity, and pacifism. Anchored in the multiversal metatheoretical foundation of Chinese Humanism, we contend that humanist relationality constitutes an original humanistic contribution to IR theory, through shifting beyond ontological substantialism to visualize a possible planetary world of anthropocosmic oneness.