This chapter discusses Francisco de Vitoria’s “republican” conception of law and politics, and the resulting connection between international law and a global legislative commonwealth.

In discussing the works of 16th-century theorists Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili, this article examines how two different conceptions of a global legal community affect the legal character of the international order and the obligatory force of international law. For Vitoria the legal bindingness of ius gentium necessarily presupposes an…[Read more]

This chapter discusses the history and relevance of the internet for processes of globalization.

This chapter discusses the quasi-juridical mode of argumentation that Francisco de Vitoria applies in his lecture on the Indians. Even though he emphasises his theological competence and starts from a biblical command (“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them …” Mt 28:19), the questions he then discusses concern specifically the…[Read more]

Taking his critique of totalitarianizing conceptions of community as a starting point, this text examines Jean-Luc Nancy’s work of an ‘ontology of plural singular being’ for its political implications. It argues that while at first this ontology seems to advocate a negative or an anti-politics only, it can also be read as a ‘theory of communi…[Read more]