International Law and Ethics after the Critical Challenge

Download or read book International Law and Ethics after the Critical Challenge written by Euan MacDonald and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.