A Cosmopolitan Philosophy of International Law A Realist Approach国际法的国际化哲学现实主义方法.pdfVIP

Ratio Juris. Vol. 12 No. 4 December 1999 (429–44) A Cosmopolitan Philosophy of International Law? A Realist Approach* DANILO ZOLO Abstract. Analyzing different works and in particular Habermas’ reflection on Kant, the author reconstructs, first, his approach to international law and his political and legal cosmopolitanism. Second, he presents some critical observations on Habermas’ cosmopolitanism in the context of his more general discursive theory of law and state. In this perspective, he discusses the problems of peace and of the role of the United Nations, the strategy of protection of human rights, and the question of world citizenship. He argues that Habermas’ cosmopolitanism is a radicalization of Kantian tradition based on a centralization of international power and a cosmopolitan law. Finally, he develops realist arguments in favour of a non-globalistic conception of international law.** 1. Prologue In modern societies, typified by a great variety of competing expectations and growing complexity of forms of life, the law performs an irreplaceable social integration function: It permits “solidarity among strangers.” It is only through the abstract instrument of law that the aspiration to social cohesion can be combined with the particularism of individual and group identities, within the framework of a “democratic State based on rule of law” that embraces subjects without infringing on their diversity. It was on the basis of this conviction that from the late Eighties Jürgen Habermas showed growing interest in law as the normative dimension of social interaction, distinct both from ethics and from politics in the strict sense. It may indeed be said that his great theoretical work Faktizität und Geltung (Habermas 1992) is, despite its thematic originality, a classic European treatise in philosophy of law. I used the expression “philosophy of law”