Walter Rech

Between regional community and global society: Europe in the shadow of Schmitt and Kojève

While celebrated for bringing peace and prosperity to the region, European integration has been recently challenged by various internal and external crises that call the progressivist narrative of ever closer—and larger—union into question. Torn between regional community and global society, particularism and cosmopolitanism, and politics and technocracy, the European Union appears beset by fundamental tensions. In search of a different theoretical perspective on “the crisis,” some commentators have drawn on Carl Schmitt’s political theory to emphasize key issues concerning political decisions, identities, and boundaries in Europe. Yet, Schmitt comes with his own blind spots. For the purpose of a critical engagement with Schmitt’s potential insights and their limits, this article contrasts his approach with that of his contemporary Alexandre Kojève, who envisioned the integration of world society through economy, law, technology, and administration, a perspective not unfamiliar to the original story of European integration. In reconsidering the dialectic between Schmitt’s and Kojève’s positions, this article goes beyond their apparent contradictions and discusses attempts by both authors to reconcile the opposition, from Kojève’s move to Empires to Schmitt’s theory of the union, thereby illuminating deep-seated dilemmas of contemporary European politics which fundamentally condition its trajectory between contestation and re-constitution.

Some remarks on the EU’s action on the erosion of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary

ABSTRACT The political situation in Poland and Hungary has contributed to a growing sense that the common values of the European polity are being radically challenged and, in some contexts, utterly dismantled. The European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe have reacted to the crisis e.g. through the recommendations of the Venice Commission and the Rule of Law Framework, while scholarship has conducted an intense debate on the conduct of Fidesz and PiS and the potential means to strengthen liberal democracy vis-à-vis these parties. This article shares the concerns of the institutional and scholarly critique of Fidesz and PiS since the EU cannot relinquish the ideal of liberal democracy and the question of the member states’ institutional commonality. Still, the article draws attention to a matter that has thus far been neglected in the mainstream debate on Hungary and Poland, that is the question of the ambivalence of the rule of law and democracy narrative as deployed by European institutions. To some extent, it is precisely the failure to recognize its own ambiguities, both theoretical and practical, that makes liberal democratic discourse a homogeneous and easy target vulnerable to rhetorical attacks by radical nationalist parties.

Scepticism of empire in modern Western thought

Indigenous offensive failed largely because of their dependence on English guns and ammunition. One positive outcome of the Yamasee War for the Indigenous peoples of the South was that the English ended the Indian slave trade and switched to the importation of African slaves instead. After 1715, the Chickasaws and other coalescent societies such as the Cherokees and Creeks were able to maintain their autonomy by participating in the deerskin trade and by exploiting the continuing Anglo-French rivalries. One weakness of this monograph is that the Chickasaws often disappear into the background. Partially because of a lack of primary sources, the author in many ways gives a regional history of the Indigenous peoples of the South from De Soto through the Yamasee War. In several chapters the Chickasaws barely feature and instead the reader is distracted, and sometimes confused, by a detailed discussion of the movements and relocations of a large number of Indigenous groups throughout the region. Similarly, the lack of any individual Chickasaw voices never make the Chickasaws come alive as active participants in their own history. Furthermore, the author’s thesis that the English market economy quickly undermined Indigenous autonomy may be too deterministic. Although the Chickasaws did become eager participants in the Indian slave trade, they also continued to be an important regional military and economic power for decades after the Yamasee War. Despite this criticism, From Chicaza to Chickasaw has much to offer for students concerned about the destructive impact of European expansion on Indigenous peoples. Ethridge’s concept of a shatter zone may underestimate Native adaptation and resilience, but it offers a new framework to think about how trade, violence, and diseases unleashed by European colonialism transformed Native societies of the Americas.

History and Normativity: Vico’s ‘Natural Law of Nations’

In August 1727 the learned Leipzig journal Acta Eruditorum featured a brief abstract of a treatise, Principii d’una scienza nuova, recently published by a certain ‘Neapolitan abbot’ named Vico.1 Based on a second-hand report, the reviewer suggested that the book represented a poor attempt to confute Grotius and Pufendorf and to forge a spurious system of natural law suited to the taste of the Catholic Church. Vico’s argument, the reviewer went on, was conjectural, contradictory, and had been received with scarce enthusiasm even among Italian readers. Two years later Vico replied to these disapproving comments in an apologetic tract, the Vindiciae, in which he declared that nearly all information contained in the review qualified as utterly false (including the appellation of ‘abbot’, which did not fit him as a man married and the father of five). One statement, however, Vico took care to acknowledge as truthful: the conformity of the Scienza nuova with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, a conformity which he depicted as an outstanding merit, not a fault. Adherence to the Catholic teaching allowed him, or so he claimed, to amend the ‘heretical’ doctrines of Protestant natural lawyers such as Grotius, Selden, Pufendorf, Gronovius, Ulrik Huber and Thomasius, all of whom had allegedly failed to recognise ‘divine providence’ as the foundation of the law of nature and nations.2 Despite such apologetic statements Vico’s legal doctrine did not strike the reader as particularly pious. Throughout the Scienza nuova he actually described natural law not as the handiwork of a benevolent and personal God,

Enemies of Mankind

Introduction Literature review Main arguments Structure of the book Vattels Life Part One Enemies of Mankind outside Europe 1 Pirates and Robber Nations 2 The Barbary Issue in Early-Modern Legal Doctrine 3 Universalising the European Law of Nations: Vattels Rejection of the International Legal Pluralism of the Laws of War Part Two Enemies of Mankind within Europe 4 Guilty Sovereigns: Warmongers and Violators of the Law of Nations 5 Disturbers of the Balance of Power 6 Tyrants Conclusion Bibliography.