This paper underlines Vattel's commitment to maintaining the sovereignty of Europe's small states by enunciating the duties he deemed incumbent upon all political communities. Vattel took seriously the threat to Europe from a renascent France, willing to foster an equally aggressive Catholic imperialism justified by the need for religious unity. Preventing a French version of universal monarchy, Vattel recognised, entailed more than speculating about a Europe imagined as a single republic. Rather, Vattel believed that Britain had to be relied upon (...) to prevent excessive French ambition, and to underwrite the independence of the continent's smaller sovereignties. Against those who saw Britain as another candidate for the domination of Europe, Vattel argued that Britain's commercial interests explained why it was a different kind of state to the great empires of the past. The paper goes on to consider the reception of Vattel's ideas after the Seven Years War. Although further research is required into readings of Vattel, especially in the smaller states of Europe in the later eighteenth century, the paper concludes that by the 1790s Vattel was being used to justify war to defeat the gargantuan imperialist projects of newly republican France, in order to maintain Europe itself, and the smaller states within it. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ranks alongside Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as one of the most profound and influential works in moral philosophy ever written. In Kant's own words its aim is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality, the categorical imperative. Kant argues that every human being is an end in himself or herself, never to be used as a means by others, and that moral obligation is an expression of the (...) human capacity for autonomy or self-government. This edition presents the acclaimed translation of the text by Mary Gregor, together with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard that examines and explains Kant's argument. (shrink)

Whether this satirical inscription on a Dutch innkeeper's sign upon which a burial ground was painted had for its object mankind in general, or the rulers of states in particular, who are insatiable of war, or merely the philosophers who dream this sweet dream, it is not for us to decide. But one condition the author of this essay wishes to lay down. The practical politician assumes the attitude of looking down with great self-satisfaction on the political theorist as a (...) pedant whose empty ideas in no way threaten the security of the state, inasmuch as the state must proceed on empirical principles; so the theorist is allowed to play his game without interference from the worldly-wise statesman. Such being his attitude, the practical politician — and this is the condition I make — should at least act consistently in the case of a conflict and not suspect some danger to the state in the political theorist's opinions which are ventured and publicly expressed without any ulterior purpose. By this clausula salvatoria the author desires formally and emphatically to deprecate herewith any malevolent interpretation which might be placed on his words. (shrink)

Between the end of the Middle Ages and the late 17th century, peace treaties became far more elaborate and detailed. Doctrine did not follow suit. The Italian civil lawyers Pierino Belli (1502-1575), Albericus Gentilis (1552-1608) and the Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) were among the first of the early modern authors of the law of nations to cover peace treaties in a somewhat systematic way. After Grotius, doctrine did not dramatically evolve.In his famous treatise on the law of nations of (...) 1758, the Swiss diplomat Emer de Vattel (1714-1767) devoted four chapters out of 68 to the subject. In relation to peacemaking and peace treaties, he followed closely in the footsteps of his inspirer, Christian Wolff (1679-1754).Vattel, even more than Wolff had done, had shed the forms and constrictions of humanist jurisprudence. More than anyone before, he made reference to recent and current practice. This, and his concision and clarity of style allowed him to expose the ius ad pacem in terms of generally applicable principles and rules, of a true voluntary law of peace, which was helpful to interpreting contemporary peace treaties.Vattel's most significant contribution to the law of peacemaking stems from his relating peacemaking and peace treaties expressly to the doctrines of just and legal war and of sovereign equality. The underlying ideas and assumption were not new - Wolff and he drew heavily on Grotius's conceptions of war and peace -, but Vattel expounded them far less apologetic and far more straightforward than any of the older writers. Although Vattel himself did not do away with the idealism of just war and just peace, by making the doctrine of sovereign the basic tenet of the law of peacemaking and by setting out a systematic exposition of compromise peace - which, I propose to call 'formal peace' as opposed to 'just peace' - he made 'formal peace' into an autonomous category. It offered later international lawyers a great platform to divorce peacemaking altogether from morals and justice. (shrink)