Abstract
Today’s globalization is merely a technical, in other words economic, military, information technology-based scientific embodiment of the unfathomable universality of human beings. The text therefore first sketches out a few profiles of philosophical universal proposals and a few ancient voices of the historians. Against this backdrop, the text explains an initial greater-space theory of Franz Rosenzweig and after this the diagnosis of the contemporary globalization process, which we owe to Joachim Ritter. Finally, the text presents a counter-concept of Carl Schmitt that proceeded Ritter’s diagnosis by only a few years.
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Notes
- 1.
On this topic, from a sweeping historical view, see Jürgen Osterhammel/Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
- 2.
This text is largely identical to one chapter of my book Der implizite Mensch, Berlin: Oldenbourg Akademieverlag 2013.
- 3.
Plato, Politeia, 592, in: The Republic of Plato, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898, p. 49, online at www.babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015008514203;view=1up;seq=4 (last accessed 28.11.2017).
- 4.
Karl Marx, Letters from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Marx to Ruge, Kreuznach, September 1843, online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm (last accessed 28.11.2017).
- 5.
Ibid.
- 6.
Herodotus, The Histories, Greek/English, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004 (reprint).
- 7.
Cicero, On the Orator, Books I-II, Latin/English, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948.
- 8.
See Thukydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 3 vol., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965.
- 9.
Incidentally, Polybius is very cautious in his study of fate or chance, τυχη. For all events, including historical events, it is generally true that it is usually not appropriate to speak of τυχη, for “to speak of chance in such a matter would not be to offer any adequate solution of the question, and would be a mere idle evasion. A cause must be sought; for without a cause nothing, expected or unexpected, can be accomplished.”: Polybius, Histories 2.38, online at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D38 (last accessed 28.11.2017), cited from the Greek edition of Polybii Historiae, edited by Theodorus Buettner-Wobst, Leipzig: Teubner 1889). This passage shows especially clearly that even the incomprehensible is not something without a cause. It has causes, but they are simply unknown to us or inaccessible. And if that is the case, then it is permissible to close the explanation gap with the acts of the gods, fate, or assumptions about coincidences. Even fate does not deny the rational worldview of original occurrences, but supports it.
- 10.
Polybius, Histories, 6.9., online at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D9 (last accessed 28.11.2017).
- 11.
Ibid., 6.10. online at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D6%3Achapter%3D10 (last accessed 28.11.2017).
- 12.
Ibid., 1.4., online at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D4 (last accessed 28.11.2017).
- 13.
Ibid., 1.3., online at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D3 (last accessed 28.11.2017).
- 14.
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005 (German original: Der Stern der Erlösung, 1921). Also still worth reading is the early study by Jürgen Habermas, Der deutsche Idealismus der jüdischen Philosophen (1961), in: Jürgen Habermas, Philosophisch-politische Profile, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1971, pp. 37ff., especially pp. 40–41.
- 15.
Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk. Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. III: Zweistromland. Kleinere Schriften zu Glauben und Denken, edited by Reinhold and Annemarie Mayer, Dordrecht: Nijhoff 1984, Editors’ Comments, pp. 850–851. The text itself can be found in this volume on pp. 313–368.
- 16.
Franz Rosenzweig, Globus, op. cit., p. 313.
- 17.
Ibid.: “The Earth is destined from the time of creation to be overlaid by boundaries at all times. Boundedness is in its nature, and boundlessness only an ultimate goal […]. The boundlessness that remains the Earth’s ultimate goal is inherent in the ocean right from the start.” In short: “the ocean always radiates a brilliance that conjures up the unknown Outside before the soul that is ready for sleep” [“Die Erde ist so von der Schöpfung her bestimmt, in aller Zeit von Grenzen überzogen zu werden. Begrenzbarkeit ist ihre Natur, Unbegrenztheit nur ein letztes Ziel […]. Die Grenzenlosigkeit, die der Erde letztes Ziel bleibt, ist dem Meer von Anbeginn eigen.” Kurz: “[V]om Meer her strahlt stets ein Glanz, der ihm das unbekannte Draußen vor die schlafbereite Seele zaubert.”].
- 18.
The fact that the costs of colonization would leave a horrifying legacy for our own era was something that Rosenzweig could not foresee at the time. The heart of Africa, the Congo, is still suffering from this, see the monumental study by David Van Reybrouck, Congo: The Epic History of a People, New York: HarperCollins, 2014.
- 19.
Franz Rosenzweig, Globus, op. cit., p. 367.
- 20.
Cf. Mathias Schmoeckel, Die Großraumtheorie. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Völkerrechtswissenschaft im Dritten Reich, insbesondere der Kriegszeit, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1994.
- 21.
Franz Rosenzweig, Globus, op. cit., p. 368.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 348.
- 23.
Joachim Ritter, Europäisierung als europäisches Problem, in: Europäisch-asiatischer Dialog, Vorträge der Tagung in Bottrop vom 25. bis 28. Oktober 1955, published by the Landesverband nordrhein-westfälischer Geschichtslehrer, Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann 1956, pp. 9–19 (reprinted in: Joachim Ritter, Metaphysik und Politik, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1969, pp. 321–340.)
- 24.
Ibid., p. 337.
- 25.
This also needs to be emphasized because there are now voices arguing against it—most recently Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780−1914. Global Connections and Comparisons, Oxford 2004: Wiley-Blackwell. Bayly, like other authors before him, tries to globalize the image of globalization itself. What he is able to prove are in fact worldwide excitation centers of an emerging modernization as early as the nineteenth century, what he leaves underexplored is the European infection that spread from these excitations in the United States as well as China. The fact that the project has a counter-Eurocentric flavor is described by Herfried Münkler as “smart” in his discussion (in the German weekly Die Zeit, July 12, 2006), but all in all this gain is merely politically correct. What are indisputable are the diverse anchoring points for globalization processes that were started and then given up (for instance in China) throughout the corridors of world history. The current format, however, as we can see from the design of the metropolises, legal formats, and industrial and scientific bases, is clearly European.
- 26.
Joachim Ritter, Europäisierung als europäisches Problem, op. cit., p. 335.
- 27.
Ibid., p. 339.
- 28.
See Joachim Ritter, Die Aufgabe der Geisteswissenschaften in der modernen Gesellschaft, in: Joachim Ritter, Subjektivität, Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp 1974, pp. 105ff.; see also Wolfram Hogrebe, Echo des Nichtwissens, Berlin: Oldenbourg Akademieverlag 2006 (especially the preface: Die Qual der Geschichte).
- 29.
This was known in the West since the time of Lessing’s Ring Parable.
- 30.
See on the following Wolfram Hogrebe, Riskante Lebensnähe. Die szenische Existenz des Menschen, Berlin: Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, 2009 (to a certain extent, I use word-for-word explanations from this book below).
- 31.
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum, New York: Telos Press, 2003 (German original: Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, Cologne: Greven, 1950).
- 32.
Ibid., p. 39 (Ibid., Preface).
- 33.
Cited ibid., p. 307; in the German original, Schmitt was only paraphrasing Stimson’s speech and described it as “open transition to criminalization” (“offenen Übergang zur Kriminalisierung,” Ibid., p. 284).
- 34.
Ibid., p. 380 (Ibid., p. 285).
- 35.
Ibid., p. 308 (Ibid, p. 285).
- 36.
Ibid., p. 308 (Ibid., p. 285).
- 37.
See Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Sovereign power and bare life, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. On this quite curious author, cf. Eva Geulen, Giorgio Agamben zur Einführung, Hamburg: Junius 2005.
- 38.
This reading was pointed out to me by Gerd Giesler in his letter dated March 20, 2009. The consequence of this interpretation, however, would be that Carl Schmitt would have to give up his positioning concept as the basis for all legal relationships (“the Earth’s realm of the senses,” “das Sinnreich der Erde”). Thus, according to his requirements, the entire nomos would be up in the air.
- 39.
Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, op. cit., p. 39 (Idem., Der Nomos der Erde im Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum, op. cit., preface).
- 40.
Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949.
- 41.
William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West. A History of the Human Community, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
- 42.
Incidentally, it would be worth a separate investigation to see how the world history movement in the United States (William H. McNeill, Immanuel Wallerstein et al.) and, somewhat less pointedly because it comes from the school of the Annales, the project of a Histoire croisé (Bénédicte Zimmermann, Michael Werner and others), politicize international historical studies in a strange way. McNeill—with good reason—received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2010. According to his work, as of now, world history is also the national history of the United States.
- 43.
Max Lerner, America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957, p. 59–59, cited in Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Reaming of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996, pp. 326.
- 44.
Most recently David Christian, Maps of Time. An Introduction to Big History, Berkeley: University of California Press 2005 (with a preface by William H. McNeill).
- 45.
Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, New York: Harper Perennial 1992.
- 46.
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, op. cit.
- 47.
Max Lerner, America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today, op. cit., cited in: Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, op. cit., p. 326.
- 48.
Herfried Münkler, Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
- 49.
Matthias Herdegen, Völkerrecht, Munich: Beck Juristischer Verlag 2008 (7th edition), p. 197; and further: Otto Depenheuer: Was wir verteidigen, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 26, 2009, p. 8.
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Hogrebe, W. (2019). Nomos Earth. In: Kühnhardt, L., Mayer, T. (eds) The Bonn Handbook of Globality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90377-4_5
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