The idea of international society : a study of the via media in the theory of international relations, with special reference to Erasmus, Vitoria, Gentili and Grotius

Abstract

This study is about a hypothesis in the theory of international relations, a search, and what was found. It consists of eight chapters divided into three parts. Part One, containing one chapter, presents the hypothesis of Otto von Gierke, Martin Wight and Hedley Bull that midway between the realist (also referred to as the Machiavellian or Hobbesian) tradition and the universalist (or Kantian or revolutionist) tradition there is the Grotian (or rationalist or internationalist) tradition - here called the via media. It originated in Europe in the late fifteenth/early sixteenth century and, together with the other two, has existed since that time. It has its own distinctive pattern of ideas, although some of these ideas are also present in the other two. The term which best describes and identifies this pattern is international society. Part Two records the search and its findings. It comprises five chapters. Chapter Two discovers evidence for the existence of the idea of international society well before 1500. Chapters Three to Six explore the writings of four thinkers associated with the early phase of this tradition and find the idea of international society in three of them - Erasmus, Vitoria and Gentili - but not in the fourth, Grotius. Part Three evaluates the findings of Part Two. It consists of two chapters addressed to the idea and the thinkers respectively. Chapter Seven concludes that the pattern of ideas found in Erasmus, Vitoria and Gentili, while not identical in the three thinkers, has all the elements of the hypothesis of Gierke, Wight and Bull as well as certain additional elements. Chapter Eight finds that thinkers of the via media may be no less "realistic” observers of events than realists; it further finds that that which links the former across time is not so much "a tradition of thought" as "a way of thinking". Show more