The Grotian Conception of International Society (1966)

Abstract

This paper was presented to, and discussed by, the British Committee on 14 and 15 April 1962. In the previous paper (‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’) Bull was concerned with establishing the basic idea of an international society and sought to contrast it with both a Hobbesian image of unbridled anarchy and a Kantian vision of universal community. In ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’ Bull unpacks the tradition of international society itself. He identifies a pluralist conception of international society, associated here with Vattel, the nineteenth-century positivist international lawyers and, in particular, with the work of Lassa Oppenheim, and he seeks to contrast this with the solidarist conception which he associates with Grotius and what he terms the ‘neo-Grotians’.