Paul Ricoeur and International Law: Beyond ‘The End of the Subject’ - Towards a Reconceptualization Of International Legal Personality

Abstract

The enquiry into international legal personality in the following article is both descriptive and prescriptive in nature. On the one hand, the phenomenon of the (legal) subject is described and explained, in order to offer a better reflection on, and analysis of, its existence. This holds for both the individual and the (so central to international law) collective subject. On the other hand, our attempt at reconceptualization has a clear normative aspect. Reconstructing (international) legal personality on the basis of anthropology and ethics as an inextricable part of the identity of a person results in a conception of (international) law as justice. And this means that international legal personality reconceptualized along the lines suggested in this paper functions to develop just international institutions and just international law.

Keywords: Cosmopolis, Ethics, Hermeneutics, Hobbes, International Institutions, International Legal Personality, Justice, Legal Theory, Natural Law, Phenomenology, Postmodernism