Europe and the New World Order: Lessons from Alexandre Kojève's Engagement with Schmitt's ‘Nomos der Erde’

Leiden Journal of International Law

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 93-103

  Howse, Robert ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

Alexandre Koj ve; Carl Schmitt; Grossraum; Leo Strauss; Universal and Homogenous State; world state

Indexed keywords

EID: 85010092020     PISSN: 09221565     EISSN: 14789698     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0922156505003195     Document Type: Article

References (16)

1. R. Kagan, ‘Power andWeakness’, Policy Review, June 2002.
2. ‘February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together” A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe’, 10 (3) Constellations 291.
3. ‘February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together” A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe’., at 291.
4. Published in English translation by G. L. Ulmen as The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (2003). All further references are to this edition.
5. This comes out most clearly in ‘Nomos-Nahme-Name’, published in 1955.
6. And this is aside from the fact that, while in the case of Iraq, European public opinion seemed to support a territorial-sovereignty-based system of legal restraints againstUS ‘universalism’, in other cases the European public, or a large part of it, was willing to place universal values (human rights) beyond those restraints, e.g. Kosovo.
7. See especially Kojè ve'smemorandumof advice to Charles de Gaulle, ‘Outline of aDoctrine of French Policy’, trans. E. de Vries, Policy Review, Aug./Sept. 2004. See also my interpretative essay on Kojè ve's ‘Latin Empire’ in the same issue of Policy Review, on which I draw freely in this paper.
8. A. Koje, Outline of a Phenomenology of Right, ed. B. P. Frost, trans. B. P. Frost and R. Howse (2000).
9. Kojè ve, this is aside from the fact that note 9, at 327.
10. this is aside from the fact that., and see the interpretative essay by Howse and Frost in the same volume.
11. Jan-Werner Mü ller, in his fine book on Schmitt's intellectual legacy in Europe, has also addressed this exchange between Schmitt and Kojè ve, and I am in his debt; my own reading does not really challenge or contradict in any important respect that ofMü ller, but formy own purposes I place the emphasis somewhat differently. See J.-W. Mü ller, A Dangerous Mind” Carl Schmitt in Post-war European Thought (2003); I am also grateful for illuminating conversation and e-mail exchanges withMü ller.
12. this is aside from the fact that., at 327.
13. this is aside from the fact that., letter of 2May 1955.
14. Emphasis in original.
15. Koje ve, Emphasis in original. note 8, at 16 (emphasis added).
16. This concept of a post-Schmittean political is being developed in work-in-progress by the author with ProfessorKalypso Nicolaidis.Heacknowledgesmanyvaluableandstimulating conversationswithNicolaidis on this question.