Internal and External Concepts of Obligation in the Theory of International Relations

Abstract

This chapter aims at a closer understanding of the nature of the conflict between two moral perspectives present in the structure of the modern state. It focuses upon three postulates of modern political life: the belief that the sovereign state is legitimately the basis of world political organisation; the conviction that the morality pertinent to the conduct of foreign relations must be different from that observed by citizens in their social relations; and the assumption that international cooperation can only be undertaken if there is good reason to believe that it will satisfy the state’s pragmatic considerations. We shall be particularly concerned to show how these postulates were defended within contractarian thought, and we shall consider the fact that they were contested within universalist perspectives linked with the Stoic-Christian tradition. An understanding of these two positions and their conceptions of international relations facilitates grasping the bifurcated nature of modern moral and political experience.

The history of the human species as a whole may be regarded as the realisation of a secret plan of Nature for bringing into existence a political constitution perfect both from the internal point of view and, so far as regards this purpose, from the external point of view also; such a constitution being the sole condition under which Nature can fully develop all the capacities she has implanted in humanity. (Kant)

They moralise from without instead of understanding the nature of the state from within. (Meinecke)