Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T19:38:12.014Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - International Law, Peace, and Justice: Hans Kelsen’s Normativism

from Part II - International Law and Western Civilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2019

Gustavo Gozzi
Affiliation:
Università di Bologna
Get access

Summary

Chapter 6 proceeds from a cosmopolitan perspective to address the problem of the crisis of the sovereignty of nation-states in the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, to this end drawing on Hans Kelsen, who proceeded precisely from an awareness of that crisis to develop a monistic conception of international law relative to the states’ domestic law. In his analysis he called into question the very principles of nineteenth-century doctrine, where international law – conceived as the highest expression of the state – was accordingly reduced to what Hegel called external public law, or the state’s external law (äußere Staatsrecht). He instead drew on a tradition of thought that traced back to Christian Wolff and his doctrine of the civitas maxima, taking it up as the institutional form of a new society of peoples. Kelsen thus developed a conception that, moving beyond any contract-theory approach, made international law into a higher-order system independent of the will of the states. Corresponding to this doctrine was an ideology of “pacifism” set against the “imperialist” ideology of nation-states.
Type
Chapter
Information
Rights and Civilizations
A History and Philosophy of International Law
, pp. 141 - 165
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×