Presenting the first critical analysis of Carl Schmitt's _The Nomos of the Earth_ and how it relates to the epochal changes in the international system that have risen from the collapse of the ‘Westphalian’ international order. There is an emerging recognition in political theory circles that core issues, such as order, social justice, rights, need to be studied in their global context. Schmitt’s international political thought provides a stepping stone in these related paths, offering an alternative history of international relations, (...) of the genesis, achievements and demise of the ‘Westphalian system.’ Writing at a time when he believed that the spatial, political and legal order—the nomos of the earth—had collapsed, he highlighted the advent of the modern state as the vehicle of secularization, tracing how this interstate order was able to limit and ‘rationalize and humanize’ war. Providing a large number of case studies including: global terrorism, humanitarian intervention and US hegemony, this book will give further impetus to, and expand, the nascent debate on the significance of Schmitt’s legal and political thought for international politics. _The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt_ will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, law and history. (shrink)

Offering the first full assessment of Heidegger’s philosophy in the fields of International Studies and International Political Theory, this important volume provides a fresh intervention into the debate on globalization from a critical theory perspective.

In response to varied processes of globalization, the cosmopolitan perspective has rightly insisted that discussion of global ethics ought to be taken seriously. This article agrees with cosmopolitan theorists in calling for the implementation of a perspective that can address the other outside of narrow communal determinations. Yet it also advances a critique of their reliance on legalist instruments such as human rights, contending that the bestowal of human rights does not necessarily or directly lead to an ethics of inclusiveness. (...) While the attribution of universal humanity to all may appear as an appropriate means of extending ethical regardedness to all others, this does not immediately follow from such a legalist gesture. Any attempts to articulate a truly global ethics must begin by questioning the distinct communal sensibilities which, by the very fact of their distinctiveness, always already contain within them a ‘xenophobic’ element that cannot be transcended solely by the bestowal of human rights or other such instruments. This article, therefore, discusses a different kind of ‘cosmopolitan’ disposition, one which is based on the recovery of an ethical selfhood that understands itself as an opening to otherness. For this task, it explores the phenomenological analyses of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and specifically his examination of how communication can be cultivated through hearing and silence. (shrink)

In response to varied processes of globalization, the cosmopolitan perspective has rightly insisted that discussion of global ethics ought to be taken seriously. This article agrees with cosmopolitan theorists in calling for the implementation of a perspective that can address the other outside of narrow communal determinations. Yet it also advances a critique of their reliance on legalist instruments such as human rights, contending that the bestowal of human rights does not necessarily or directly lead to an ethics of inclusiveness. (...) While the attribution of universal humanity to all may appear as an appropriate means of extending ethical regardedness to all others, this does not immediately follow from such a legalist gesture. Any attempts to articulate a truly global ethics must begin by questioning the distinct communal sensibilities which, by the very fact of their distinctiveness, always already contain within them a ‘xenophobic’ element that cannot be transcended solely by the bestowal of human rights or other such instruments. This article, therefore, discusses a different kind of ‘cosmopolitan’ disposition, one which is based on the recovery of an ethical selfhood that understands itself as an opening to otherness. For this task, it explores the phenomenological analyses of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and specifically his examination of how communication can be cultivated through hearing and silence. (shrink)