The Relevance of International Law: A Hegelian Interpretation of a Peculiar Seventeenth-

Century Preoccupation
Author(s): Erik Ringmar
Source: Review of International Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Jan., 1995), pp. 87-103
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097397
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Review of International Studies (1995), 21, 87-103 Printed in Great Britain

The relevance of international law: a

Hegelian interpretation of a peculiar
seventeenth-century preoccupation*
ERIK RINGMAR

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.
Although many scholars take this relationship between law and self-interest to be
an axiom valid regardless of different times and different cultural settings, a
historical analysis will inevitably unearth a number of problems with the thesis.
During the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, for example, statesmen often
discussed legal issues with great seriousness and often at great length. One example
of such statesmen is provided by the Swedish King Gustav II Adolf and the
members of the Swedish Council of the Realm. In the discussions which preceded
Sweden's intervention in the Thirty Years War in 1630 the Swedish leaders would
return to legal arguments again and again. But how, then, should we explain this
peculiar early modern preoccupation with matters of international law? Historians
have given two radically different answers in reply to this question. The Swedes
paid attention to international law, it has been argued, either because they had a
genuine interest in the stipulations of morality, or because they needed a moralistic
guise behind which they could conceal their policy of imperialism.
In this article I will present an alternative explanation which differs from both
these traditional ones, and which defends the independent status and the relevance
of international law. As I will argue, twentieth-century concepts like 'realism' and
'idealism' fit badly with these early modern discussions and they obscure the real
issues at stake. The reason is that the early modern era was a time of state
creation?a time when state identities were being formed?and at such times legal
considerations are likely to play a different role than at times when state identities
can be taken for granted. Although national interests may not bow to legal
requirements, legal requirements are crucial when it comes to creating and sus
taining a national identity. There are, to wit, two features of the law which
contribute to this end: the law gives substantive content to the actions that political
entities perform, but in addition, it also provides a standard by which political
entities may be recognized as entities of a certain kind.
To talk about law, recognition, and identity formation in the same breath is of

*
I am grateful to Jens Bartelson, J?rgen Hermansson, Fredrika Lagergren, Steven Saxonberg,
Alexander Wendt, and Hans Christian Wind for their comments and criticisms.

87
 88 Erik Ringmar

course a very Hegelian

to invoke vocabulary. In fact, and as I will argue, G. W. F.
Hegel's interpretation of international law can help us to throw new analytical light
not only on the legal discussions which took place in the early modern era, but also
on the ways in which international law may be rel?vent in our contemporary world.

The Swedish Council debates

On 26 June 1630, Swedish troops under the command of King Gustav II Adolf
landed in Usedom on the northern coast of Germany.1 This was the beginning of a
military campaign which in several respects was nothing short of extraordinary. A
poor, sparsely populated, country on Europe's northern fringe had decided to take
up arms against the Habsburg emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the mightiest
ruler on the Continent.2 The subsequent war?the 'Thirty Years War' to the
historians?was, however, to bring both successes and failures to the Swedes. After
the Swedish victory at the battle of Breitenfeld on 7 September 1631, Gustav Adolf
was greeted as the saviour of the Protestant religion and as the new head of the
German corpus evangelicorum. Only a year later, however, he was found dead on
the battlefield of L?tzen, Saxony. And although Sweden continued to maintain a
presence in Germany after the death of the king, Swedish troops increasingly had
to rely on subsidies from Cardinal Richelieu's government in France. Despite this
somewhat mixed record, when peace was finally concluded in 1648, Sweden was
nevertheless recognized as a fully fledged imperial power and as a major player in
European politics.
Even though the Swedish intervention may have been a spectacular enterprise, it
was, however, by no means a rash or an unpremeditated action. Before they finally
made up their minds, the Swedish leaders had discussed the question of the
'German war' for a number of years and in a number of diff?rent fora. Already in
the early 1620s, Gustav Adolf had warned his countrymen of the impending danger
posed by the Catholic forces which were advancing towards the Baltic sea coast.
And from the beginning of 1628 he held repeated and lengthy consultations on the
topic with the members of the Council of the Realm, with the estates of the Diet,
as well as with his personal advisers. Much of this material still remains in the
archives and it provides us with a very good view of the deliberations undertaken
by the Swedish decision makers.3
A particularly striking feature of the debates held in the King's Council is the

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 Michael Roberts, 'The Political
Objectives of Gustav Adolf in Germany, 1630-2', in his Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967).
As well as the classic study by C. V. Wedgwood, [1938], The Thirty Years War (London, 1963),
pp. 269-332.
3
In print as: Arkiv till upplysning om svenska krigens och krigsinr?ttningarnes historia 1A (Stockholm,
1854); Svenska Riksr?dets Protokoll, vol. 1, edited by N. A. Kullberg (Stockholm, 1878); Konung
Gustaf II Adolfs tal och skrifter, edited by C. Hallendorff (Stockholm, 1901). An English translation
of some of the relevant material can be found in Michael Roberts (ed.), Sweden as a Great Power,
1611-1697: Government, Society, Foreign Policy. (London, 1967).
 The relevance of international law 89

repeated attention given to matters of international law. This body of law was of
course relatively new at the time and a field of scholarship which attracted much
attention. Beginning with Francisco de Vitoria in 1539 a number of thinkers and
philosophers had expanded at great lengths on how relations between states were to
be regulated, and a particular emphasis was put on the question of how to regulate
war. The
legal scholars stipulated conditions under which wars were to be
considered as just and unjust; put forth the circumstances under which inter
ventions were permitted and prohibited; and discussed how neutrals should relate
to warring parties. The most influential pronouncement on these issues was
provided by Hugo Grotius in his treaties De iure belli ac pads, The Law of War
and Peace, published in 1625.4
As the protocols of the Council meetings clearly demonstrate, the Swedish
leaders attached great importance to these stipulations. The Swedes were very
concerned that the action they contemplated would, as the king put it, make them
able to 'not merely fight it [the war] with a clear conscience, but also to justify it
before the whole world'.5 Do we really have sufficient reasons for our war to be
called just?, they asked themselves. Do we have the right to support the Protestant
principalities in Germany against the Habsburg emperor, their lawful ruler? Should
we, as the law stipulates, dispatch a peace mission to Vienna, or should we go to
war without any prior negotiations? At meeting after meeting from the autumn of
1628 until the time of the intervention itself, arguments pro as well as contra each
position were adduced and carefully considered and weighed against each other.
Often these debates were held in Latin rather than in Swedish in order to allow
easy references both to ancient and to contemporary
legal authorities.6
The extent of this preoccupation is also attested to by the fact that the king by
all appearances was an avid reader of legal treaties. According to reports, he spent
some time each day studying ancient and rriodern authorities on the subject, and
especially 'the work of Grotius, and in particular his tractatus lure belli ac pads'.
The king always carried his Grotius with him?he was said to rest his head on the
book at night, to keep it in his saddle bag during the day, and a copy of the work
was found in the royal tent after his death.7
To later generations of historians this attention to matters of international law
has of course been somewhat perplexing. We are not used to legal arguments being
foremost in a politician's mind and especially not foremost on the mind of a

4
Published in excerpts as Hugo Grotius [1625], 'On the Law of War and Peace', in M. G. Forsyth,
H. M. A. Keens-Soper and P. Savigear (eds.), The Theory of International Relations: Selected Texts
from Gentili to Treitschke. (London, 1970), pp. 37-85. The natural law background of Grotius'
thought is discussed in Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development
(Cambridge, 1979), pp. 58-81.
5
Gustav Adolfs address to the Council, 'One of the days December 9-12, 1628,' published as
appendix to Nils Ahnlund, i riksr?det om tyska kriget 1628-1630,' Historisk
'?fverl?ggningarna
tidskrift, 34(1914), p. 114.
6
Lars Gustafsson, Virtus Pol?tica: Politisk etik och nationeilt sv?rmeri i den tidigare stormaktstidens
litteratur (Uppsala, 1956), pp. 105-6.
7
Gustafsson, Virtus Pol?tica p. 85; Hedley Bull, 'The Importance of Grotius in the Study of
International Relations', in Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury and Adam Roberts (eds.), Hugo
Grotius and International Relations. (Oxford, 1990), p. 75. 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.
90 Erik Ringmar

politician who is preparing for a foreign war. Why, then, did the Swedish leaders
spend such a lot of time on these issues? There are, we could say, two different
explanations of this fact.8 To nationalistic Swedish historians, who have seen
Gustav Adolf as a defender of his country and of his Protestant faith, the attention
paid to international law demonstrated the king's great concern for the stipulations
of morality. The Swedes were not only good Evangelical Christians, it is pointed
out, but also staunch defenders of the law.9 Other historians?often of a radical
bent or of a Catholic background?have, however, been far less impressed. To this
latter group of scholars these legal arguments were nothing but the rhetorical
moves of cynical Machiavellians.10 The pretty words were designed to conceal the
reality of military imperialism abroad and political repression at home. The
intervention of 1630 was propelled by economic and social causes, and moral
considerations only served to giveimperialism an idealistic face.
Regardless of which of thesetwo groups of historians we decide to trust,
however, a puzzle still remains. What neither the sympathetic nor the cynical
interpretation can explain is why matters of international law occupied such a
prominent place in the Swedish discussions. Why did legal arguments reappear
repeatedly in one Council meeting after another during the course of more than one
and a half years? And why were they a central topic, not of public declarations
delivered on solemn occasions, but of top-secret discussions held between the king
and his closest advisers?
What would a political scientist say regarding this question? How would a
scholar of international politics assess the Swedish Council debates? The most
readily available answer to these questions is likely to disappoint us. The dis
cussions taking place among contemporary scholars of international politics have
closely mirrored those taking place among historians. What historians have talked
about in terms of the dichotomy between 'moralism' and 'cynicism', political
scientists have talked about in terms of 'idealism' and 'realism'. While the idealists
have regarded law as the very foundation on which world peace is to be built, the
realists have pointed out that it is power, not law, which governs the world. Like
all dichotomies, the realism/idealism split leaves little room for nuance and subtlety.
If it is understood as a distinction between the world as it ought to but cannot be,
and the world as it really is and must be, then our only choice is whether to
participate in the games of power politics or to place our hopes in illusions.
International law, as Hans Morgenthau concluded,
delivers the enforcement of the law to the vicissitudes of the distribution of power between
the violator of the law and the victim of the violation. It puts a premium upon the
violation of the law as well as upon the enforcement of the law by the strong and,
consequently, puts the rights of the weak in jeopardy.11

8
For a summary of the historiographical debates on the Swedish intervention, see Sverker Oredsson,
Gustav Adolf Sverige och trettio?riga kriget: historieskrivning och kult (Lund, 1992), as well as Erik
Ringmar, 'Historical Writing and Rewriting: Gustav II Adolf, the French Revolution and the
Historians', Scandinavian Journal of History, 18, no. 4 (1993).
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. Curt Weibull, 'Gustav II Adolf,' Scandia, 6 (1933); Axel Strindberg [1937], Bondenod och
stormaktsdr?m (Stockholm, 1988), pp. 17-18.
11
Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1948),
p. 229.
 The relevance of international law 91

According to Morgenthau, international law is irrelevant since it is utterly decen

tralized in its legislation, adjudication, and enforcement.12
Yet there are good scientific reasons to be sceptical about this traditional
dichotomy. As a number of recent writers have pointed out, it is simply not true
that states act as the realists have predicted.13 Realism, ironically, is not very
realistic. Norms, rules and legal considerations do, for example, have much more of
an independent role than traditional scholars have granted.14 Inter-state politics
might perhaps best be described not as a pure anarchical realm, but rather as a
social system, or as an 'anarchical society'.15 In fact this societal view of world
politics is often associated with the name of Hugo Grotius. As Hedley Bull
explains, Grotius was the first writer to point out that states simultaneously are
sovereign and independent of each other and yet also parts of the greater society of
all of mankind, the magna communitas generis.16
The fact that Grotius' name pops up first in connection with a puzzle pertaining
to political debates carried out in early seventeenth century Sweden, and next as a
way to improve on a traditional, overly rigid, analytical vocabulary, indicates that
there might be some kind of a connection between the two issues. Could it be that
the Swedes of the early seventeenth century read Grotius for the same reason that
we might read him today?because of his emphasis on the social character of
inter-state relations? This is of course an intriguing question, yet a question which
is difficult to answer in a straightforward fashion. To a contemporary reader,
Grotius' writings will inevitably appear as analytically underdeveloped, even na?ve,
for the simple reason that most writings on international politics followed upon,
rather than preceded, Grotius' own contribution.17 It is, for example, not at all
clear how his thought relates to the realism associated with the post-Hobbesian
tradition or to the idealism of the post-Kantians.18 And hence, as long as we are
trying to defend the Grotian view of world politics with the help of arguments
drawn from Grotius himself, we are not likely to get very far. The Grotian
alternative can all too easily be portrayed as an insignificant elaboration on the
realist view or, alternatively, as yet another futile attempt to defend an idealistic
'ought-to-be'.19
What the Grotian view needs is consequently a more secure philosophical
grounding. It needs the support of a writer who was a
in position to react both to
post-Hobbesian and to post-Kantian thought; someone with a clear notion of why

12
Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, p. 211.
13
Compare the discussion inMartin Hollis and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding
International Relations (Oxford, 1991), pp. 25-6.
14
See, e.g. Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and
International Relations (Columbia, 1989), esp. pp. 228-57; Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms,
and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and
Domestic Affairs (Cambridge, 1989).
15
Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, 1977).
16
Bull, 'Importance of Grotius', p. 72. See also Bull, Anarchical Society, esp. 24-27, and Bull, 'The
Grotian Conception of International Society,' in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds.),
Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London, 1966), pp. 51-73.
17
Compare Wight's complaints in Martin Wight and Hedley Bull (eds.), Systems of States (Leicester,
1977), p. 127.
18
Bull associates Hobbes with realism and Kant with idealism. See Bull Anarchical Society, pp. 24-5.
19
R. B. J. Walker, Inside IOutside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1993),
pp. 69-70.
 92 Erik Ringmar

a self-interested statesman would ever pay attention to matters of international law.

The obvious choice here is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, that notorious
arch-enemy of constraining, simple-minded dichotomies. Yet Hegel was highly
sceptical of international law as it had been understood by Immanuel Kant and the
Kantians. In fact, when turning to the topic at the end of the Philosophy of Right
he sounded very much like a Cold War realist of the Morgenthauian mould.20 The
relation between states, Hegel reminded his readers, is a relation between autono
mous entities which make mutually beneficial deals with each other, but which at
the same time always are superior to those deals.21
This hard-line position does of course make Hegel into a somewhat unlikely
source of a construction of a defence of the relevance of international law. Yet as
we shall
see, Hegel's philosophy of right does contain components, which, when
properly assembled, will takes us beyond both moralism and Realpolitik. The trick
here hinges on the notion of a 'right' and on the fact that the law fulfils more
functions than those concerning legislation, adjudication, and enforcement which a
realist thinker like Morgenthau emphasized. As Hegel argued, the law is not only a
tool for telling right from wrong, but also a tool for determining the class of subjects
to whom the law itself applies. The law not only provides a basis for the punishment
of transgressors, but it also allows for the constitution of individual identities. The
law allows us to give content to our wills and thereby also to our lives, and it
allows others to recognize us as persons, or as states, of a particular kind.

Hegel on recognition

Hegel's philosophy of right is in many respects best read as a rejoinder to

Immanuel Kant and as a philosophical reaction to the events of the French
Revolution. Hegel was characteristically ambiguous in his assessment of Kant.
While he regarded Kant's philosophy as a major achievement, he never failed to
point out that this philosophy remained fundamentally incomplete in some crucial
aspects. Kant's great insight, as Hegel would have it, was his rejection of all
traditional backings of morality?religion, nature or monarchical decrees?and his
attempt to establish morality on the basis of the freedom of human reason.
According to Kant, 'the categorical imperative' presents a standard of rationality to
which human beings must conform if they want to affirm their free will and their
autonomy.22 To break this law would be self-defeating since it would constitute a
denial of one's capacity for freedom.
Although Kant's ethics were thus an important step forward, Hegel was pro
foundly sceptical of what he regarded as the empty formalism of the Kantian
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.' G. W. F. Hegel, [1821], Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford, 1952), ?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.
H. J. Paton (New York, 1964), 428, sect. 46.
 The relevance of international law 93

system.23 Kant had attached moral obligations to an abstract self?a 'pure

reason'?divested of all cultural traits and historical or social characteristics. But as
Hegel argued, there simply is no such a- or /?re-social self to whom rights may be
attached, and all attempts to establish a morality on this basis will therefore be
self-defeating. There can be no such thing as an abstract free will since 'to will'
always implies 'to will something', and for this reason Kant's categorical imperative
will always remain indeterminate in terms of subjective content.24 In particular, the
categorical imperative will provide little practical or political guidance in times of
crisis, and Hegel found proof of this conclusion in what he regarded as the excess
of the French revolution.25 During the reign of the Jacobins, moral self-legislation
had given free reign to the arbitrary wills of despotic dictators. For the same reason
it was Utopian to believe, with Kant, that states ever could join together in zfadus
pacificum and bring about a 'perpetual peace'.26 If push came to shove, the primary
obligation of each state would always be towards its own welfare and not towards
an abstract and universal code. '[S]o far as international relations are concerned we
can never get beyond an "ought." '27

Hegel labelled the abstract, empty, Kantian notion of ethics 'Moralit?f and
contrasted it with his own definition of ethics in terms of Sittlichkeit. While
Moralit?t referred to abstract principles and to ought-to-be's, Sittlichkeit referred to
the existing moral obligations of actual communities. To act in accordance with
Sittlichkeit was thus necessarily to follow the given social code and to perpetuate
the already existing.28 Naturally this would seem to make ethics into an inherently
conservative enterprise, but before we reach any such conclusion we should take a
closer look at the relation between ethics and Hegel's own definition of freedom
and its connection to the development of personal identities.
As we said, Hegel praised Kant for his break with traditional sources of morality
and for his attempt to establish ethics on the basis of freedom and reason, while
remaining profoundly sceptical of the empty formalism that Kant's solution
implied. If freedom was to be protected it would consequently have to be placed on
a different, and more secure, foundation than that of Kantian self-legislative
reason.

What distinguishes human beings from animals, Hegel began this alternative
deduction, and what gives us freedom from determination through nature, is the
fact that we can form second-order desires.29 We can want to want things and desire
to desire. While animals only seek comfort and safety and the most immediate
satisfaction of their urges, human beings can organize their desires and thereby also
their selves. But as Hegel repeatedly stressed, one person's organization of his or
her self can only be carried out in interaction with others. We cannot be whatever

23
This section draws on Steven Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago,
1989), pp. 103-31.
24
Smith, Hegel's Critique, pp. 108-9.
25
For a discussion, see Joachim Ritter [1956], Hegel and the French Revolution: Essays on The
Philosophy of Right, trans. Richard Dien Winfield (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 35-89.
26
Immanuel Kant [1795], 'To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch', in Immanuel Kant, Perpetual
Peace and Other Essays, trans. Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis, 1983), pp. 107^3.
27
Hegel, 1821/1952, ?333, pp. 213-214.
28
As Taylor emphasizes in Charles Taylor, Hegel and Modern Society (Cambridge, 1979), p. 83. For a
discussion of the intellectual context of Hegel's use of this term, see Laurence Dickey, Hegel:
Religion, Economics, and the Politics of Spirit 1770-1807 (Cambridge, 1987).
29
Smith, Hegel's Critique, pp. 116-17.
94 Erik Ringmar

we want to be, but only somebody as we are recognized by people around us.30 The
desire to be recognized is consequently not just another desire, but instead the core
human desire, central to our sense of who we are. Only as recognized by others do
we fully come to exist as persons since it only is as recognized that we can separate
ourselves from the nature that surrounds us as well as from our natural desires.
But Hegel also stressed that recognition by others is never immediately forth
coming, but instead something for which individuals would have to fight. In the
chapter on 'Lordship and Bondage' in the Phenomenology of Spirit he imagined a
situation where two individuals were facing each other, neither of them recognized
the other.31 Between them a struggle for recognition ensued through which one of
them came to be recognized as superior?both by himself and by the other?while
the other came to be regarded as inferior. The 'master' gained recognition from the
'slave' by 'going all the way' and risking his own life, while the slave, cautiously,
preferred to save his life and to accept his inferior position.32
As Hegel went on to say, however, the master was unlikely to be satisfied with
his victory for very long. The slave was only a slave after all, and the recognition
he granted was simply not enough. What the master craved most of all was not just
recognition, but recognition from someone equal to himself; respect granted by
someone he himself in turn respected. The difference between the master and the
slave had to be overcome, and the mechanism through which this was to take place
was the slave's capacity to develop himself through the force of his own labour. As
Hegel argued, the slave could educate himself and become 'someone' as he worked
on his capacities and on the world around him. In this way recognition and
personal identity came to be seen as achievements which only could take place in
the course of time. Hegel envisioned social relations as becoming increasingly equal
as more and more individuals freed themselves both from the determination by
nature and from the subjugation imposed upon them by others.
A society where each individual is recognized by all others and treated with
respect is what Hegel referred to as an 'ethical community'. In such a community
the law is not a conservative force, but instead the guarantee that a person is
treated decently and granted the right to develop his or her personality and
individual capacities. A 'right' according to Hegel is fundamentally a right to
recognition, and as such it is intrinsically related to the development of a per
sonality and to freedom from natural determination.33 To Hegel, the law is thus
not, as Kant would have it, a guarantee of a pre-constituted, underlying indivi
duality, but instead something which human beings merit as a result of the struggle
for recognition in which they engage. Only once a person is constituted as an
autonomous self can rights properly be attached to her. Law acknowledges this

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.' G. W. F. Hegel, [1807],
Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977), ?178, p. 111.
31
Hegel, 1807/1977, ??178-196, pp. 111-119.
32
Compare the celebrated interpretation provided by Alexandre Koj?ve, [1974], Introduction to the
Reading of Hegel: Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. James H. Nichols (Ithaca, 1980),
pp. 3-70. See also Axel Honneth, '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); Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung: zur moralischen Grammatik
sozialer Konflikte (Frankfurt-on-Main, 1992).
33
Compare Merold Westpahl, 'Hegel's Radical Idealism: Family and State as Ethical Communities',
in Hegel, Freedom, and Modernity (Albany, 1992), pp. 37-54; Smith, Hegel's Critique, pp. 122-31.
 The relevance of international law 95

achievement and establishes a structure through which it can be secured and

sustained. It is a fundamental tenet of Hegel's thought that such a community
would have to be coextensive with the state; only in the state was a true ethical life
possible.
If we compare
Hegel's notion of the law with Kant's, or with the notions
presupposed by both contemporary idealists and realists, we consequently find that
Hegel points to two additional functions besides those concerning legislation,
adjudication, and enforcement. The law is first of all a structure of meaning with
the help of which content can be attached to individual wills and thereby also to
individual lives. Secondly, the law is a structure of rules through which people can
be classified, recognized, and in this way identified as persons of a certain kind.
If we focus on the first of these two functions, the law will come to have very
much the same status as any other rule, norm, or custom which exists in a society.34
We use
the law as we use other rules that our society provides in order to give
meaning to our lives; we submit ourselves to a certain way of life, and as a result
we come to see ourselves as persons of a certain kind. Here the law is similar to
what George Herbert Mead referred to as the point of view of the 'generalized
other'.35 Only in so far as each individual takes the attitudes of all other members
of her community into account
will she be able to develop a complete self. By
taking a generalized point of view, she is able to 'step out of her own shoes', as it
were, and see herself as the others would. To abide by the law is thus not primarily
a matter of 'being good', but rather a matter of submitting oneself to a rule which
makes it possible 'to be' in the first place. Here abstract and universal rules will be
irrelevant and empty since there is no such thing as an abstract and universal
person. A Kantian self is a no-bo?y rather than a some-body.
If we focus on the second of these two functions, the law can be understood as
a system through which a person can be given recognition by others. Rules provide
standards by which actions can be judged and assessed, and thereby also standards
through which we can draw conclusions regarding the persons who perform them.
The standard, in other words, is used not only to judge actions, but also to identify
the actors to whom the standard itself applies. On the basis of this argument we
could perhaps hypothesize that a person who is insecure regarding her own
identity?say, a new member of club, a profession, or any other social system?is
likely to be a particularly faithful rule-follower. By following the rules in their
minutest details such a person is making demands on the people around her to
recognize her as a legitimate member of their group.

Hegel on international law

Having established these general points we are now in a position to return to

34 ... we mean
As Hegel put it: 'In speaking of Right [Recht] 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
George H. Mead [1932], Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of A Social Behaviorist
(Chicago, 1964), p. 155. For an application of Mead's arguments to international politics, see
Alexander Wendt, 'Anarchy isWhat States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Polities',
International Organization, 46, no. 2 (1992).
 96 Erik Ringmar

Hegel's treatment of international law.36 As we might expect, Hegel's insistence that

the state is the only entity in which a sittlich life can be lived determined his views
also of the relations obtaining between states. Since the world could never become
an ethical community, the inter-state law could never play the role it did in
relations between individuals. Still this did not mean that Hegel was indifferent to
the nature of inter-state relations. In fact, it was a crucial part of his argument that
the state is not only a product of the consent given to it by its citizens, but also a
political subject, or a person, in its own right. Also the state had to be recognized
before it could come into existence.
This conclusion may perhaps seem uncalled-for. Why, we may ask, would states
have to become 'selves' or 'persons'? Hegel's answer was that this conclusion
followed from the notion of sovereignty. To play a role in the historical and
philosophical development of mankind, the state had to be sovereign both in
relation to other states and in relation to its own inhabitants. It was only if the
state had a right to defend itself against foreign enemies that its ethical life could
be protected, and it was only as independent from civil society that it could
constitute a sphere where individuals could be turned into citizens and ethical,
non-self-serving, beings.37 This sovereignty could only come to be established to the
extent that the state was recognized by other states as well as by the state's own
inhabitants. Only as recognized would the state be sovereign and only as such
would it be free and a person in its own right.38
But how was this recognition to be gained? Here, again, Hegel stressed the role
of conflict, or more precisely, of war. As far as the internal relationship between the
state and its inhabitants was concerned it was war that brought out the civic virtues
of the bourgeois class. Only at a time of great danger could the bourgeoisie be
convinced to leave
their petty private pursuits and sacrifice themselves for the
collective. While
prolonged peace gave rise to the illusion that the state existed
merely for the sake of private interests, a war united men for the purpose of
common ideals.39 Yet a state had to be recognized not only by its inhabitants, but
also by other states, and also in the external relationship between one state and
another was war the mechanism through which recognition was granted.40 The
'master and slave dialectics' repeated itself in inter-state relations. Recognition is
never immediately forthcoming, Hegel repeated, and if a collection of people is to
gain it, they must first fight for it. As proof of this conclusion, Hegel pointed to
how the young French Republic had been disrespected and humiliated by the
monarchical regimes which surrounded it, but how Napoleon?at the head of the

36
Hegel's on inter-state
views affairs are discussed by, among others, Shlomo Avineri, 'The Problem
of War in Hegel's Thought', Journal of the History of Ideas, 22, no. 4 (1961); Steven Smith, 'Hegel's
Views on War, the State and International Relations', American Political Science Review, 11 (1983).
37
Compare F. R. Cristi, 'The Hegeische Mitte and Hegel's Monarch', Political Theory, 11, no. 4
(1983), pp. 601-22; 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.
 The relevance of international law 97

French army?had forced them to grant the country the recognition they had failed
to grant freely.

When Napoleon said before the Peace of Campoformio [1797, the treaty which concluded
Napoleon's first Italian campaign] that the French Republic needs recognition as little as
the sun requires it, what his words implied was simply the strength which carries with it,
without any verbal expression, the guarantee or recognition.41

But just as in relations between individuals, perpetual war between states was not
the end of the story. Also in world politics Hegel envisioned that relations of
mutual respect could be developed. The world could never become a full-fledged
ethical community to be sure, but it could become a kind of 'quasi-community' of
states that mutually recognized each other's sovereignty. Perhaps we could call this
the 'mature phase' of world politics to which states would gain admission once they
had established domestic ethical communities of their own and once their external
struggles for recognition had abated. Among these states, conflict would still
remain a possibility, but Hegel believed wars would become increasingly rare and
increasingly humane. No doubt the Congress of Vienna, 1815, and the European
Concert system which this settlement inaugurated, were the empirical points of
departure of this philosophical argument.42 As Hegel pointed out:

The European peoples form a family in accordance with the universal principle underlying
their legal codes, their customs, and their civilization. This principle has modified their
international conduct ... in a state of affairs otherwise dominated the mutual infliction
by
of evils.43

In this mature, post bellum, quasi-community, there was indeed a role to play for
international law. International law, that is, understood not as an aprioristic
morality, but as inter-state custom.44 The kind of international law which mattered
consisted of the practices developed between states who freely granted each other
recognition. On this basis, codes of conduct could be established which remained
valid also in the case of conflict.

The fact that states reciprocally recognize each other as states remain even in war?the
state of affairs when rights disappear and force and chance hold sway?a bond wherein
each counts to the rest as something absolute. Hence in war, war itself is characterized as

something which ought to pass away.45

For Hegel, in other words, international law and war are not as much contra
dictory moments?'morality' and its negation?as complementary processes which
presuppose each other. A state begins by fighting for recognition, and once this
recognition is granted it may join the ranks of states that mutually recognize each
other, and only as such is it a legitimate partner in contracts and in mutually
advantageous deals.
After this summary of Hegel's argument, let us return to the puzzle with which

41
Hegel, 1821/1952, addendum to ?331, p. 297.
42
On the European Concert in the early nineteenth century, see e.g. Ian Clark, The Hierarchy of
States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 93-130.
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.
98 Erik Ringmar

we began. Why, we asked, were the Swedish leaders responsible for the intervention
of 1630 so peculiarly preoccupied with matters of international law?

The Swedish discussions

Perhaps we should begin by emphasizing the magnitude of the transformations

which took place as the world of the Middle Ages was replaced by that of the
Renaissance. In political terms, the most important of these changes was the
process through which the state came to be established as the only legitimate
political unit, and through which a system of interacting states was formed which
had norms and rules which were exclusively its own.
The world of the Middle
Ages had been both local and universal in scope. While
most people had
lived and worked in traditional, local, communities governed by
feudal lords, the religious, intellectual, and political world had been universal in
spirit and often enough also in fact. All of this changed, however, in the course of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the institution of the state was wedged
in-between the local and the universal levels, and as it appropriated?and monopo
lized?the functions
previously carried out elsewhere. As a result, economies were
increasingly organized on a state scale; the unitary body of Christianity was divided
through the Reformation and often also dismembered into state-churches; intel
lectual pursuits increasingly came to be carried out in the vernacular rather than in
Latin. According to the new Renaissance doctrine, the state was sovereign,
acknowledging no authority above it and none below.46 Much of early modern
political thought?from Niccol? Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes to Cardinal
Richelieu and the first mercantiles?can be read as attempts to give legitimacy to
the power vested in this new political institution.
The sovereign states also increasingly came to see themselves as interacting in a
system of other states. This was perhaps most evident in the diplomatic conduct
which emerged first in the Italian city-states and later also in the rest of Europe.47
Naturally, one state's capacity for warfare soon came to be seen in the context of
the similar capacities possessed by all other states, and while this made the question
of war into a primary political concern, it also turned it into an intellectual
problem. While it had been obvious in the Middle Ages where justice lay in a
conflict between a Christian and a heathen ruler, it was not as easily determined
among two Christian princes that fought for the just cause. International law as it
was developed in the course of the sixteenth century sought to address precisely this
question.
It is important to notice,
however, that the problem of war not only concerned
questions of howresponsibilities were to be allocated, but also questions of how
identities should be defined. International law was never designed to end war, but
instead to designate the class of actors who legitimately could fight wars. In this
connection there were two lines that had to be drawn: one between the state

46
Compare discussions in Jens Bartelson, The Geneaology of Sovereignty (Stockholm, 1993) esp. pp.
78-122; James Der Derian, On Diplomacy: A Geneaology of Western Estrangement (London, 1987).
47
See e.g. Adda B. Bozeman, Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton, 1960), pp.
457-513; Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (London, 1955).
 The relevance of international law 99

and various sub-state actors?feudal lords, for example, or independent peasant

communities?and the other between the state and super-state institutions?notably
the Catholic Church and the post-Roman Empire. By making the prince its legal
subject, this new body of law simultaneously denied the same status to both supra
and sub-state actors. As an instrument for buttressing the status of the state,
international law thus served exactly the same purpose as the arguments presented
by political philosophers such as Machiavelli and Hobbes.48
By adhering to the rules of international law, a state did thus not only do what
was wrong or right, but, more importantly, it gave content to its life as a social
being in a world of other states, and itmade demands on other states to recognize
it in accordance with these rules. By adhering to the precepts of international law,
each state defined itself as a legitimate member of the system of states and
demanded recognition as such from those states that already were legitimate
members of it. This is the force of Grotius' argument in De iure belli ac pads that
a state must adhere to international law just as a citizen must adhere to the laws of
her own society.

For just as the national, who violates the law of his country in order to obtain an
immediate advantage, breaks down that by which the advantages of himself and his
posterity are for all future time assured, so the state which transgresses the laws of nature
and of nations cuts away also the bulwarks which safeguard its own future peace.49

Grotius' position here should not be read as an idealistic exhortation to behave

'morally', but rather as a piece of factual information regarding the requirements of
any process of identity formation. Only within a viable international social order
can a state establish itself as a legitimate actor; whatever a state does serves
to maintain, or disrupt, that order. If states are to constitute themselves as
independent, sovereign entities, the law must be upheld.
If we return to the Swedish intervention of 1630 with these considerations in
mind it becomes possible to provide an alternative interpretation of why the
Swedish decision makers spent such a lot of time on legal discussions. To wit, the
king and his advisers discussed international law neither because they were
particularly 'moralistic' nor primarily because they sought 'legal justifications' for
their actions, but instead because they sought recognition for their country as a
legitimate member of the emerging system of states. Only by playing by the rules
could they be identified as the kind of actor to whom these rules applied. But as we
shall see, these attempts were ultimately all in vain, and as it became obvious that
recognition would not be granted freely, the Swedish leaders decided to gain it by
military means.
In order to drive home this argument we should begin by noticing the ambiguous
position which early seventeenth-century Sweden occupied in relation to its neigh
bours. The country was, at best, a marginal member of the European inter-state
system. In fact, Sweden's diplomatic isolation and the lack of respect granted to the
country and its ruler were the main themes of Swedish foreign policy discussions

48
As Rousseau was ironically to remark regarding Grotius: 'Sa plus constante mani?re de raisonner est
d'?tablir toujours le droit par le fait. On pourrait employer une m?thode plus cons?quente, mais non
plus favorable aux tyrans.' Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social [1762], book I, chapter 2, in
uvres compl?tes, vol. II (Paris, Seuil, 1967), p. 519.
49
Grotius, 1625, Prolegomena, ?18.
 100 Erik Ringmar

throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.50 'Why and from what
cause is it', as Gustav Adolf asked the Diet in 1625, 'that our realm and fatherland
by so many and so often is attacked and sought after?' The only reason I can find,
he said,

'is that we cannot carry out our enterprises with the same strength and power as other
nations and peoples, and this causes disrespect and contempt from our neighbours, so that

they argue that we can count for very little and become ready to suppress and dominate
us.'51

In order to give proof of this 'disrespect' and 'contempt' the insecure Swedish
leaders pointed to a number of different controversies and 'affairs'. One such affair
concerned the question of the 'Three Crowns'. During the Middle Ages, Denmark,
Norway and Sweden had been united in a triple monarchy with three crowns as its
insignia. When the Swedes broke away from this alliance in the 1520s, the Swedish
leaders?much to the dismay of the Danes?continued using the crowns as a
symbol also of their sovereign state. By using its emblem the Swedes naturally
sought to lay claim to all the legitimacy that the Scandinavian monarchy had
acquired throughout the years. As late as the early 1600s the affair still had not
been settled and as a result the Danes stubbornly refused to recognize the Swedish
king as a fully legitimate ruler.52
Swedish dynastic struggles also added to these problems. Family feuds within the
ruling royal house and successive coups d'?tat in 1523, 1570 and 1599 had not only
created dissension within the country, but also suspicion abroad. When Gustav II
Adolf ascended to the throne in 1611 it was simply not very clear with what right
he governed. This was especially the case since the former king, Sigismund, who
was also king of Poland, kept on demanding the return of his Swedish throne. As
a Catholic he wielded considerable influence with the Habsburg emperor as well as
with other Catholic rulers, and many princes on the Continent still regarded
Sigismund, not Gustav Adolf, as the legitimate Swedish king. A clear indication of
this fact was provided by the way in which the king was addressed. When peace
negotiations began with Poland in 1629, they immediately stalled since the Poles
refused to negotiate with someone who referred to himself as 'Gustav II Adolf,
King of Sweden.' Letters which arrived in Stockholm were addressed not to the
king, but to 'Gustavus the Swede' or to 'the Duke of Finland.'53
In addition, diplomatic and military relations between Sweden and its neighbours
continued to be strained. Even those countries that were supposed to be its allies
showed hesitation when dealing with Sweden and its ruler. Despite vigorous efforts,
the country remained diplomatically isolated and all Swedish proposals for a
military alliance of Protestant states were rejected. Although they in principle liked
the idea of an anti-Catholic front, Holland and England nevertheless refused to
grant the Swedish king the role of commander of such a joint?and potentially very
powerful?Evangelical force.54

50
A number of examples are provided by Wilhelm Tham, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia: 1:2,
1560-1648 (Stockholm, 1960), pp. 101-202.
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
Nils Ahnlund, Gustav Adolf den store (Stockholm, 1932), p. 51.
54
Ahnlund, Gustav Adolf, p. 318.
 The relevance of international law 101

What, then, were the Swedes to do in this situation? How could they break out
of their isolation and gain recognition for their country and their king? One option
was to seek the support of the rules that had been developed in order to regulate
inter-state conduct. By following the rules of international law, the king and his
advisers saw their country as a legitimate member of the inter-state system and
asked other princes to recognize it as such. Sweden cared about international law,
neither because its elites were particularly moralistic, nor because they were
particularly cynical, but because they sought recognition as a legitimate state
among others.

These attempts failed, however, abysmally. In fact, it turned out to be impossible

for a non-recognized country such as Sweden to rely on the rules which governed
relations between already recognized ones. Since the Swedes occupied an inferior
position vis-?-vis their neighbours, the established rules could never be used to their
advantage. This realization came, for example, to colour all the Council's dis
cussions regarding whether or not to send a peace mission to the emperor in
Vienna. Asinternational law would have it, all peaceful means should first be
exhausted before a country embarked upon war, and while the Swedish leaders
acknowledged this fact in a number of different Council meetings, they nevertheless
unanimously concluded that it would be a sign of weakness to dispatch a
delegation. Our 'securitas et reputado" will not allow it, the king concluded; it
would appear as though we were 'begging for the peace'.55 Indeed to send a
delegation would simply be to risk being humiliated. What if the Swedes were not
given an audience once they arrived? Or what if they were admitted, but treated
with insults? And what would happen if they, for example, were handed letters of
accreditation made out to someone else but not to the representatives of 'Gustav II
Adolf, King of Sweden'?56
If we take a Hegelian view of these discussions, none of this is of course
surprising. An individual or a state who is not recognized by others cannot rely on
their law in order to gain recognition. What an individual or a state first must do
isfight; recognition can only be granted through war. And this was of course also
the conclusion which eventually was reached by the Swedish leaders. 'If we do not
go across,' as the Council concluded in the fall of 1629, 'we will lose all reputation
and the blessing of God.' If we want to come to a settlement 'with reputation and
honor,' we must 'meet him with an army in his own land.'57

The relevance of international law

What is the relevance of international law? Are the idealists justified in their hopes
that international law can contain war and force states to act morally? Are the
realists correct in their dismissal of all legalistic reasoning and in their emphasis on
the power of power politics? As we know, this issue has traditionally been settled
in favour of the realists' position. If we must choose between the world as it ought
to be, but cannot be, and the world as it is, and must be, then both statesmen and

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.
 102 Erik Ringmar

scholars have been forced to opt for the latter. Yet, as a number of students of
international politics recently have pointed out, the very realism of the realists'
position can easily be questioned. States do not always follow the imperatives of
power politics, but often also the rules and norms that have developed as a result
of their common interaction. Perhaps the world is best described neither in
Kantian, idealistic terms, nor in terms of a Hobbesian state of nature, but instead
with Grotius and with Hedley Bull as an 'anarchical society'.
As we have pointed out, however, while this alternative description may be
appealing in many respects, it has so far lacked in analytical precision. The Grotian
view of world politics has hovered uneasily somewhere between the idealist and
the realist positions?all too easily portrayed as an insignificant elaboration on
Realpolitik or, alternatively, as yet another attempt to defend an idealistic ought-to
be. Given the imperatives of power politics and the futility of idealism, it has
remained unclear precisely why a statesman would be interested in international
law in its own right.
My suggestion in this article is that the writings of G. W. F. Hegel can help us
answer this question. As Hegel would stress, law provides us not only with a means
of adjudicating between right and wrong, but also with a way through which
identities can be established, recognized, and developed. The law?understood
broadly as a system of rules of conduct?gives content to our wills, and thereby
also to our lives, and by our submitting our actions to the stipulations of the law,
others can come to recognize us as persons, or states, of a certain kind.
But recognition, as Hegel stressed, is not automatically forthcoming, but instead
typically something for which each individual will have to fight. In this way, as far
as the state is concerned, international law and recognition will inevitably become
closely connected to warfare. As Hegel would have it, individual human beings can
be transformed from self-centred bourgeois to full-fledged citizens only as they risk
their lives for the state, and the state can become a legitimate member of the system
of states only as it wages war on those states that already belong to it. Although
Hegel denied the possibility of the world ever becoming a true ethical community,
he did believe that what we called a 'mature quasi-community' of states could be
formed which comprised states that mutually recognized each other. In this post
bellum community, rules and norms could be both established and maintained and
mutually advantageous deals agreed upon.
In conclusion, let us briefly consider an important corollary of this Hegelian
argument. If international law is relevant at times when identities are established, it
follows that the relevance of international law is likely to vary over time. Questions
of identity are not always salient, or not always salient to the same degree. We
generally believe we know who we are, and when our identities are securely
established we do not analyze or worry about them, we simply use them.5%Yet, as
we know, even the most entrenched of identities does eventually break down, and
this is of course where the law suddenly becomes relevant. International law, as it
was developed in the Renaissance, defined the class of entities who were subject to
it, and if you thought of yourself as a member of this class?and if you were to be
granted recognition as such?you simply had to take the law seriously.
58
Compare Alessandro Pizzorno, '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. Alejandro Foxley (Notre Dame, 1986), p. 372.
 The relevance of international law 103

Does this, then, mean that our discussion has only a historical interest? That
international law was relevant in the Renaissance, but that this relevance now is
lost? As our Hegelian interpretation makes us see, the answer to these questions
should be given in the affirmative to the extent that we believe that identities can be
taken for granted, and in the negative to the extent that we believe that this is not
the case. As we began by pointing out, most historians and political scientists who
have touched upon this issue have settled for the first of the two options. During
the course of the last three centuries, the state has become increasingly reified; it
has come to be seen as a natural part of a natural world order?as the only
legitimate political entity, and as the only arena where political activities can be
conducted. Not surprisingly, the role played by international law has gradually
been forgotten. Once the state was established as a fully constituted self, legal
arguments could easily by dismissed as just so many empty words. The realism/
idealism dichotomy was the result of this process of reification and during this
century, statesmen, political scientists, historians, as well as everyone else interested
in international politics, have been required to stand up and be counted as loyal
members of either camp.
What is taken as natural may, however, by ?fe-naturalized, and philosophy is a
good tool through which such a denaturalization may be constituted. As our
Hegelian interpretation allows us to conclude, questions of identity may be settled
in a temporary fashion, yet sooner or later they will inevitably reappear. An
identity is a social construct and not a natural feature of a natural world. It is of
course precisely this realization which provided Hegel with a unique perspective on
relations between states, and it is this fact which provides us with the ultimate
rationale for the Hegelian interpretation we have undertaken. Hegel's time, just like
that of Grotius, was a time in which taken-for-granted identities were being
undermined and new identities created. As the world of the anciens r?gimes was
breaking down, people suddenly started worrying about what it meant to be a
citizen in relation to the state, but also what it meant to be a member of a state in
relation to other states. Thus, if Grotius' time was a time when the state was
established, Hegel's time was a time when the state was filled with a radically new
content?with citizens who sought to fulfil 'national destinies.' While Grotius
sought a philosophical justification for sovereignty, Hegel sought a philosophical
justification for Napoleon and for the revolutionary French republic. Both of them
were aware that new identities needed support, and both of them in their own
way?but Hegel with more obvious philosophical sophistication?pointed to inter
national law as a means through which such support could be gained.
Where then do we stand today? This question is of course the topic of much
contemporary?and very heated?debate. Is the state 'dead'? Is it going to die? Or
are we on the contrary about to witness a neo-statist revival? The wisest thing to
do as far as this particular issue is concerned is no doubt to defer judgement. Let
us note in conclusion, however, that the mere fact that the issue arises means that
identities no longer can be taken for granted quite in the same way that they used
to be. Since this is the case, we have a good prima facie reason to try to transcend
our old, constraining, vocabularies and to investigate precisely why and how
international law may also be relevant in today's world.