International law and ethics after the critical challenge : : framing the legal within the post-foundational / / by Euan MacDonald.

• Superior document: Erik Castren Institute monographs on international law and human rights, v. 12
• Author: MacDonald, Euan.
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Erik Castren Institute monographs on international law and human rights ; v. 12.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (448 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Around twenty years ago, a challenge was laid down to international law by those writing at the critical periphery of the discipline; a challenge that has yet to find satisfactory response. Although often (mistakenly) characterised as nihilist, this book seeks to recast it in positive terms; to pose the question of what – if anything – is left of international law and ethics if we accept both that apolitical rules are impossible and that the values that must – inevitably – be used to justify them are irreducibly, radically subjective. After detailed analyses of different political and international legal philosophers who have confronted this issue, the answer is located in a “turn to literature” and a rehabilitation of the ancient notion of rhetoric.

Table of Contents

The scope and aims of the book -- International law and the critical challenge -- Reactions to the critical challenge -- A common problematic -- Foucault, ethics and enlightenment -- Rorty, epistemology and literature -- The foundations of a post-foundational ethics -- Kratochwil, rhetoric and communicative action -- Korhonen, situationality and "the cave" -- Franck, democracy and fairness -- Rawls and the law of peoples -- From contradiction to aporia -- The recovery of rhetoric -- The expansion of rhetoric -- The rhetoric of eunomia -- Framing the legal within the post-foundational.