A note on political philosophy, international relations and philosophy of history

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to consider how the conceptual resources provided by modern political philosophy, by Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the historical evolution of international right and by Kant’s philosophy of history may offer a better and deeper understanding of the logical and conceptual constraints which delimit the evolutional dynamic of international relationships. In its first part, the article tries to render the way in which the acute attention to the peculiar geometry of Earth’s space – its spherical form – constitutes a productive focal point of the analyses made by Hobbes, Pufendorf and Kant of the formal properties of human interactions, being those considered at the individual level or as relations amongst politically organized collectivities. The analysis highlights here mainly the difficulties to easily extend the solution provided by the theories of social contract for the overcoming of internal conflicts to international rivalries and contests. The paper’s second part presents a short résumé of Carl Schmitt’s analyses of the process in the course of which the agonic disputes among European states have been progressively submitted to normative principles. The point emphasized in this section is the fact that this move forward moral progress results from the most impudent cynicism of the great political powers actions, to which we owe the constitution of the jus publicum europaeum. The third and conclusive part of the paper suggests that the philosophy of history, namely in its Kantian version, is the theoretical instrument allowing the conciliation of the normative approach to the evolution of international politics and the positive, or as Schmitt would surely prefer, existencial analysis of the evolution of political foreign affairs inside the system of sovereign States.