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The relevance of international law: a Hegelian interpretation of a peculiar seventeenth-century preoccupation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Erik Ringmar
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Extract

International law, traditional scholars of international politics tell us, is a useless fiction. Statesmen either do not follow legal stipulations or they do so only when it is in their interest to do it. International law plays no independent role in world politics since it can always be reduced to the more fundamental considerations of power politics. National interests simply do not bow to legal requirements.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , January 1995 , pp. 87 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1995

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References

1 In this article I will follow recent writers who have refrained from latinizing the king's name, i.e. I will prefer ‘Gustav Adolf to ‘Gustavus Adolphus’. For a full explanation of the Swedish intervention, see Erik Ringmar, Words that Govern Men: A Narratological Explanation of the Swedish Intervention into the Thirty Years War (under review).

2 For an overview of the Swedish campaign in Germany see Roberts, Michael, ‘The Political Objectives of Gustav Adolf in Germany, 1630–2’, in his Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967)Google Scholar. As well as the classic study by Wedgwood, C. V., [1938], The Thirty Years War (London, 1963), pp. 269–332Google Scholar.

3 In print as: Arkiv till upplysning om svenska krigens och krigsinrättningarnes historia 1A (Stockholm, 1854)Google Scholar; Svenska Riksrädets Protokoll, vol. 1, edited by Kullberg, N. A. (Stockholm, 1878)Google Scholar; Konung Gusta/II Adolfs tal och skrifter, edited by Hallendorff, C. (Stockholm, 1901)Google Scholar. An English translation of some of the relevant material can be found in Roberts, Michael (ed.), Sweden as a Great Power, 1611–1697: Government, Society, Foreign Policy. (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

4 Published in excerpts as Grotius, Hugo [1625], ‘On the Law of War and Peace’, in Forsyth, M. G., Keens-Soper, H. M. A. and Savigear, P. (eds.), The Theory of International Relations: Selected Texts from Gentili to Treilschke. (London, 1970), pp. 37–85Google Scholar. The natural law background of Grotius’ thought is discussed in Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 58–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gustav Adolfs address to the Council, ‘One of the days December 9–12, 1628,’ published as appendix to Ahnlund, Nils, ‘Öfverläggningarna i riksrådet om tyska kriget 1628–1630,’ Historisk tidskrift, 34 (1914), p. 114Google Scholar.

6 Lars Gustafsson, Virtus Politico: Politisk etik och nationellt svärmeri i den tidigare stormaktstidens litteratur (Uppsala, 1956), pp. 105–6Google Scholar.

7 Gustafsson, Virtus Politico p. 85; Bull, Hedley, ‘The Importance of Grotius in the Study of International Relations’, in Bull, Hedley, Kingsbury, Benedict and Roberts, Adam (eds.), Hugo Grotius and International Relations. (Oxford, 1990), p. 75Google Scholar. The relations between the Swedish leaders and the Dutch scholar became in fact even closer after the death of the king. Between 1634 and 1644 Grotius was Swedish ambassador to the French court. For a discussion, see C. G. Roelofsen, ‘Grotius and the International Politics of the Seventeenth Century,’ in Hugo Grotius, pp. 127–30.

8 For a summary of the historiographical debates on the Swedish intervention, see Oredsson, Sverker, Gustav Adolf, Sverige och trettioåriga kriget: historieskrivning och kult (Lund, 1992)Google Scholar, as well as Ringmar, Erik, ‘Historical Writing and Rewriting: Gustav II Adolf, the French Revolution and the Historians’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 18, no. 4 (1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Compare the work of historians like C. T. Odhner, Martin Weibull and Ludvig Stavenow, discussed in Oredsson, Gustav Adolf, pp. 97–114.

10 See e.g. Weibull, Curt, ‘Gustav II Adolf,’ Scandia, 6 (1933)Google Scholar; Strindberg, Axel [1937], Bondenöd och stormaktsdröm (Stockholm, 1988), pp. 17–18Google Scholar.

11 Morgenthau, Hans, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1948), p. 229Google Scholar.

12 Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, p. 211.

13 Compare the discussion in Hollis, Martin and Smith, Steve, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford, 1991), pp. 25–6Google Scholar.

14 See, e.g. Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia, 1989), esp. pp. 228–57Google Scholar; Kratochwil, Friedrich V., Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Bull, ‘Importance of Grotius’, p. 72. See also Bull, Anarchical Society, esp. 24–27, and Bull, , ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society,’ in Butterfield, Herbert and Wight, Martin (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London, 1966), pp. 51–73Google Scholar.

17 Compare Wight's complaints in Wight, Martin and Bull, Hedley (eds.), Systems of States (Leicester, 1977), p. 127Google Scholar.

18 Bull associates Hobbes with realism and Kant with idealism. See Bull Anarchical Society, pp. 24–5.

19 Walker, R. B. J., Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 69–70Google Scholar.

20 ‘There is no Praetor to judge between states at best there may be an arbitrator or a mediator, and even he exercises his functions contingently only, i.e. in dependence on the particular wills of the disputants.’ Hegel, G. W. F., [1821], Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1952)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, §333, pp. 213–14.

21 Compare Hegel, 1821/1952, addendum to §330, p. 297.

22 The moral law can be understood as the affirmation of an inherent human potential and the guarantee of this potential is to be found in the Kantian formula which stipulates that a person should be treated ‘not merely as means for arbitrary use by this will or that; but … be regarded at the same time as an end.’ Immanuel Kant [1785], Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Paton, H. J. (New York, 1964), 428Google Scholar, sect. 46.

23 This section draws on Smith, Steven, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago, 1989), pp. 103–31Google Scholar.

24 Smith, Hegel's Critique, pp. 108–9.

25 For a discussion, see Ritter, Joachim [1956], Hegel and the French Revolution: Essays on The Philosophy of Right, trans. Winfield, Richard Dien (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 35–89Google Scholar.

26 Immanuel Kant [1795], ‘To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Kant, Immanuel, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, trans. Humphrey, Ted (Indianapolis, 1983), pp. 107–43Google Scholar.

27 Hegel, 1821/1952, §333, pp. 213–214.

28 As Taylor emphasizes in Taylor, Charles, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge, 1979), p. 83Google Scholar. For a discussion of the intellectual context of Hegel's use of this term, see Dickey, Laurence, Hegel: Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit 1770–1807 (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Smith, Hegel's Critique, pp. 116–17.

30 As Hegel famously put it: ‘Self-Consciousness exists in and for itself when and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is to say, it exists only in being acknowledged.’ Hegel, G. W. F., [1807], Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by Miller, A. V. (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, §§178, p. 111.

31 Hegel, 1807/1977, §§178–196, pp. 111–119.

32 Compare the celebrated interpretation provided by Alexandre Kojeve, [1974], Introduction to the Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Nichols, James H. (Ithaca, 1980), pp. 3–70Google Scholar. See also Honneth, Axel, ‘Morality, Politics, and Human-Beings; I. Integrity and Disrespect: Principles of a Conception of Morality Based on the Theory of Recognition’, Political Theory, 20, no. 2 (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Honneth, Axel, Kampfum Anerkennung: zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1992)Google Scholar.

33 Compare Westpahl, Merold, ‘Hegel's Radical Idealism: Family and State as Ethical Communities’, in Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity (Albany, 1992), pp. 37–54Google Scholar; Smith, Hegel's Critique, pp. 122–31.

34 As Hegel put it: ‘In speaking of Right [Recht] … we mean not merely what is generally understood by the word, namely civil law, but also morality, ethical life, and world history.’ Hegel, 1821/1952, addendum to §33, p. 233.

35 Mead, George H. [1932], Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of A Social Behaviorist (Chicago, 1964), p. 155Google Scholar. For an application of Mead's arguments to international politics, see Wendt, Alexander, ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Polities’, International Organization, 46, no. 2 (1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Hegel's views on inter-state affairs are discussed by, among others, Avineri, Shlomo, ‘The Problem of War in Hegel's Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 22, no. 4 (1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Steven, ‘Hegel's Views on War, the State and International Relations’, American Political Science Review, 77 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Compare Cristi, F. R., ‘The Hegelsche Mitte and Hegel's Monarch’, Political Theory, 11, no. 4 (1983), pp. 601–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, ‘Hegel's Views’, pp. 156–64.

38 ‘The nation state is mind in its substantive rationality and immediate actuality and is therefore the absolute power on earth. It follows that every state is sovereign and autonomous against its neighbours. It is entitled in the first place and without qualifications to be sovereign from their point of view, i.e. to be recognized by them as sovereign.’ Hegel, 1821/1952, §331, p. 212.

39 Smith, Hegel's Critique, p. 628.

40 ‘A state is as little an actual individual without relations to other states as an individual is actually a person without rapport with other persons.’ Hegel, 1821/1952, §331, pp. 212–213. If states, in the plural, ceased to exist, as Avinieri comments, there could not, by definition, remain a state in the singular. Avineri, ‘Problem of War’, pp. 468–69.

41 Hegel, 1821/1952, addendum to §331, p. 297.

42 On the European Concert in the early nineteenth century, see e.g. Clark, Ian, The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 93–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Hegel, 1821/1952, addendum to §339, p. 297.

44 ‘ [Relations between states…depend principally upon the customs of nations, customs being the inner universality of behaviour maintained in all circumstances.’ Hegel, 1821/1952, §339, p. 215. Compare Avineri, ‘Problem of War’, p. 469.

45 Hegel, 1821/1952, §338, p. 215.

46 Compare discussions in Bartelson, Jens, The Geneaology of Sovereignty (Stockholm, 1993) esp. pp. 78–122Google Scholar; Derian, James Der, On Diplomacy: A Geneaology of Western Estrangement (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

47 See e.g. Bozeman, Adda B., Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton, 1960), pp. 457–513Google Scholar; Mattingly, Garrett, Renaissance Diplomacy (London, 1955)Google Scholar.

48 As Rousseau was ironically to remark regarding Grotius: ‘Sa plus constante maniére de raisonner est d'établir toujours le droit par le fait. On pourrait employer une methode plus conséquente, mais non plus favorable aux lyrans.’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du control social [1762], book I, chapter 2, in ŒEuvres complétes, vol. II (Paris, Seuil, 1967), p. 519Google Scholar.

49 Grotius, 1625, Prolegomena, §18.

50 A number of examples are provided by Tham, Wilhelm, Den svenska ulrikespolitikens historia: 1:2, 1560–1648 (Stockholm, 1960), pp. 101–202Google Scholar.

51 Gustav Adolfs Address to the Opening of the Diet, March 10, 1625, Gustaf Adolfs skrifter, p. 213.

52 In fact the issue of the Three Crowns was cited as a causus belli for the Nordic Seven Years War in the 1560s. See Tham, 1960, pp. 35–36, 90.

53 Ahnlund, Nils, Gustav Adolf den store (Stockholm, 1932), p. 51Google Scholar.

54 Ahnlund, Gustav Adolf, p. 318.

55 Minutes of the Council, December 15, 1628, Arkiv, IA, p. 23.

56 On this last fear, see Tham, 1960, pp. 267–268.

57 Minutes of the Council, October 27, 1629, Arkiv, IA, pp. 51, 58.

58 Compare Pizzorno, Alessandro, ‘Some Other Kinds of Otherness: A Critique of “Rational Choice” Theories’, in Development, Democracy and the Art of Trespassing: Essays in Honor of Albert O. Hirschman, ed. Foxley, Alejandro (Notre Dame, 1986), p. 372Google Scholar.