Abstract
In this essay, I attempt to challenge the prevailing views and misconceptions concerning Hegel’s philosophy of international relations, and I aim to present a more complete (cosmopolitan and internationalist) account of Hegel’s and Hegelian thought which, I contend, is much more supportive of conceptions of global justice, human rights promotion, and peaceful international relations. I argue that Hegel’s “realism” about interstate relations is compatible with global cooperation and commonality, and that his well-known acknowledgement of war is compatible with a broader account of international comity. I argue also that he allows for legal arrangements that transcend the bounded confines of territorial state sovereignty, and that his situated conception of norms is compatible with a universal and even cosmopolitan conception of human rights as well as obligations. While Hegel may oppose cosmopolitan political notions of a world government as being conceptually problematic and empirically undesirable, he nonetheless recognizes the need for a more rationalized global order that promotes the freedom of individuals, the mutual recognition of diverse national states and cultures, and a global commitment to the ideas of right and justice. In the end, as I hope to show, Hegel emerges as a subtle international ethicist and global thinker very much aware of the dialectical and historical interplay of (a) global unity as sustained throughout local and regional differences, (b) abstract right and concrete culture, (c) Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, and (d) the realpolitische other.
Portions of this essay were presented at the Hegel Society of America “Global Justice” session at the 2008 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Philadelphia, PA. I would like to thank Andrew Buchwalter for his insightful “Commentary” on my essay. I would also like to thank session participants Kenneth Baynes and Clark Butler for their helpful comments and observations. Finally, I would like to thank my friend and colleague, James N. Jordan, for his very helpful editorial comments and suggestions on the final draft of the essay.
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Notes
- 1.
See J. N. Findlay, Hegel: A Re-examination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 326; Benedetto Croce, Politics and Morality (New York: Philosophical Library, 1945), 75; cf. also Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 68–9.
- 2.
See Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 447; and Merold Westphal, “Hegel’s Radical Idealism: Family and State as Ethical Communities,” in The State and Civil Society, ed. Z. Pelczynski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 287n.
- 3.
See Adriaan Peperzak, “Hegel Contra Hegel in His Philosophy of Right: The Contradictions of International Politics,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 32, no. 2 (April 1994): 243 and 254.
- 4.
Shlomo Avineri, Hegel’s Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 207.
- 5.
Robert Williams, Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 357–61.
- 6.
Janna Thompson, Justice and World Order (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 125–26.
- 7.
See Steven V. Hicks, International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order: An Essay on Hegel’s Universalism (Amsterdam/Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 1999); see also Nicholas Capaldi, “Review of International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order,” in Hegel-Studien, vol. 36 (2001): 380–83.
- 8.
Jürgen Habermas, The Divided West, trans. Ciarin Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 150–1.
- 9.
See also Andrew Buchwalter, “Hegel’s Concept of an International ‘We,’” in Identity and Difference: Studies in Hegel’s Logic, Philosophy of Spirit, and Politics, ed. Philip T. Grier (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), 156.
- 10.
See Steve Bosworth, “Review of International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order,” in The Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain, 43/44 (2001): 117.
- 11.
Cf. Peperzak, 256.
- 12.
Bernhard Schlink, “The Inherent Rationality of the State in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” in Hegel and Legal Theory, ed. D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, and D.G. Carlson (London/New York: Routledge, 1991), 348. (Italicized emphasis is mine.)
- 13.
See Peter Stillman, “Hegel on Post-Colonialism and Cosmopolitanism,” in Europe and Its Borders, ed. Andrew Davison and Himadeep Mupped (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
- 14.
Hicks, 129.
- 15.
See Stillman.
- 16.
Avineri, 201.
- 17.
Michael O. Hardimon, Hegel’s Social Philosophy: The Project of Reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 233.
- 18.
Michael H. Mitias, Moral Foundation of the State in Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right” (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1984), 194n.
- 19.
Richard Falk, Explorations at the Edge of Time (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 80.
- 20.
See also Buchwalter, 164–5.
- 21.
Ibid., 165.
- 22.
See Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 1; see also Steven B. Smith, Hegel’s Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 71.
- 23.
Cf. Charles E. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 102–3.
- 24.
Cf. Stillman.
- 25.
For more on this see Steven V. Hicks, “Hegel on International Law, International Relations, and the Possibility of World Community,” Dialogue and Universalism 7 (1995): 5–27; see also Hardimon, 174–227.
- 26.
For more on Hegel’s interactive/recognitively based political theory of human rights, see Kenneth Baynes, “Toward a Political Conception of Human Rights,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 35, no. 4 (2009): 371–390.
- 27.
Thomas Pogge, “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty,” Ethics 103, no. 1 (October, 1992): 51.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
For a much more detailed discussion of these and other related issues, see Hicks, 1995 and 1999; see also Steven V. Hicks, “Regionalism, Globalism, and the Prospects for World order: A Hegelian Approach,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 30, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 49–78; and Steven V. Hicks, “The Project of Reconciliation and the Road to Redemption: Hegel’s Social Philosophy and Nietzsche’s Critique,” in Between Global Violence and the Ethics of Peace: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. E. Demenchonok (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 153–80. In addition, see Andrew Buchwalter, “Hegel, Global Justice, and the Logic of Recognition,” (paper presented in the “Hegel and Global Justice/Injustice” session at the annual meeting of the American Political Science, Boston, Mass., August 2008); and Francis Cheneval, “Review of International Law and the Possibility of a Just World Order,” in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 3 (2000): 458.
- 30.
See also Stillman.
- 31.
See also Buchwalter (2008).
- 32.
See Stillman.
- 33.
For more on this, see Hicks (1995), 19–20.
- 34.
See Buchwalter (2008).
- 35.
For more on Hegel’s “historicized universalism” and its implications for cultural tolerance and openness, see Allen Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 203–205; see also Clark Butler, Human Rights Ethics (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008), 117–20.
- 36.
See Buchwalter (2008); see also Pogge, 68.
- 37.
For more on the distinction between das äussere Staatsrecht and Völkerrecht, see Buchwalter (2007, 2008).
- 38.
Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ch. xiii.
- 39.
Fred R. Dallmayr, Hegel: Modernity and Politics (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993), 158.
- 40.
Ibid.
- 41.
See Stillman.
- 42.
See also Thomas Mertens, “Hegel’s Homage to Kant’s Perpetual Peace: An Analysis of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right §§ 321–340,” The Review of Politics 57, no. 4 (1995): 680–91.
- 43.
See Stillman.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
See Edith Wyschogrod, Spirit in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger, and Man-Made Mass Death (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 123.
- 46.
See also Ibid., 106–49; and Hicks (2009).
- 47.
Wyschogrod, 149.
- 48.
For more on this issue, see Wyschogrod, 149; and Hicks (2009).
- 49.
Peter Stillman, “Hegel, Civil Society, and Globalization,” Chap. 6 below.
- 50.
Joseph C. Flay, “Comment on Harris’s ‘Hegel’s Theory of Sovereignty, International Relations, and War’ and Paolucci’s ‘Hegel and the Nation-State System of International Relations,’” in Hegel’s Social and Political Thought: The Philosophy of Objective Spirit, ed. D. P. Verene (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980), 170.
- 51.
Cf. Butler.
- 52.
Flay, 170–171.
- 53.
Fred R. Dallmayr, “Rethinking the Hegelian State,” in Hegel and Legal Theory, ed. D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld, and D. G. Carlson (New York and London: Routledge, 1991), 322.
- 54.
See Hicks (2002).
- 55.
See Michael H. Mitias, “International Law and World Peace,” Dialectics and Humanism,3 (1990): 192.
- 56.
See Hardimon, 164.
- 57.
Mitias (1990), 192.
- 58.
For a more detailed discussion of these and related issues see Steven V. Hicks, “Rethinking Nature, Culture, and Freedom,” in The Challenges of Globalization: Rethinking Nature, Culture, and Freedom, ed. Steven V. Hicks and Daniel E. Shannon (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 1–23; see also Hicks (2002).
- 59.
Richard Falk, “An Inquiry into the Political Economy of World Order.” Portrack Seminar Paper, Dumfries Scotland, June, 1994.
- 60.
Cf. Falk (1992), 204.
- 61.
See Falk (1994).
- 62.
For more discussion on these and related issues, see Hicks (2002), 53–70.
- 63.
See also Errol E. Harris, “Hegel’s Theory of Sovereignty, International Relations, and War,” in Hegel’s Social and Political Thought: The Philosophy of Objective Spirit, ed. D. P. Verene (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980), 147–8.
- 64.
Thompson, 120.
- 65.
See Avineri, 207.
- 66.
See Hicks (2002), 71; also cf. Butler.
- 67.
See Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 38–9; Anthony Kwame Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” Critical Inquiry 23, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 617–39; see also Buchwalter (2012), 227–229..
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Hicks, S.V. (2012). Hegel on Cosmopolitanism, International Relations, and the Challenges of Globalization. In: Buchwalter, A. (eds) Hegel and Global Justice. Studies in Global Justice, vol 10. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8996-0_2
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