“What is security?” has long puzzled IR theorists. It is intimately tied to how we conceptualize security itself. Out of the linguistic turn, new theoretical perspectives emerged to challenge dominant perspectives on security, including The Copenhagen School. However, that school now finds itself locked in an internal debate that has exposed inherent weaknesses in its positivist approach. The question then is whether its “philosophy approach” can be salvaged. A review of the pragmatics literature suggests not. But, its scholars need not cede the school to post-positivist approaches just yet. An institutionalist alternative exists that provides a far more structured hierarchy for understanding security issues. Unlike the securitization framework, it is not “inextricably tied to a dynamic of threats, dangers, and urgency.” Instead, it provides a system that can operate vertically to accommodate the full range of possible security issues, including those that constitute NATO’s “Emerging Security Challenges” domain.
