Abstract
This chapter engages the idea of a law of hospitality which was articulated in the natural law tradition from Francisco de Vitoria in the early sixteenth century to Immanuel Kant in the late eighteenth — Kant’s being the last significant contribution to this tradition. It argues that the account of hospitality in the ‘law of nations’ provided by this early modern tradition of thought was bounded by two poles — right of communication and right of property — which, while mutually constitutive of a law of hospitality, also continually threatened to unravel it. While any law of hospitality requires that travellers have rights to hospitable treatment, it also depends upon their hosts having some claim to exclusive property in their domains or territories. The tension between these two irreducible poles of hospitality, a feature of hospitality that Jacques Derrida has demonstrated in quite other contexts, is, it is argued, an enduring feature of otherwise very different accounts of the law of hospitality in the early modern natural law tradition.1 Three of the natural lawyers who consider hospitality in some detail, namely Vitoria, Grotius and Vattel (Vitoria and Vattel are the focus of the first section), make little headway in stabilising the two poles of right of communication — right of property in hospitality, despite tending towards different poles (Vitoria towards right of communication and Vattel towards right of property).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Jacques Derrida, Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas, P. Brault and M. Nass (trans.) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999)
Jacques Denida, Of Hospitality, R. Bowlby (trans.) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000)
Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, M. Dooley and M. Hughes (trans.) (London: Routledge, 2001).
Anthony Pagden, ‘Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe’s Imperial Legacy’, Political Theory 31:2 (2003), pp. 171–99
]Georg Cavallar, The Rights of Strangers: Theories of International Hospitality, the Global Community, and Political justice Since Vitoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
Baron de Montesquieu, Complete Works, Vol. 2 The Spirit of Laws (London: T. Evans, 1777 [1748]), pp. 144–5.
David Hume, Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 [1748]), p. 122
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Random House, 1994 [1776]), pp. 440–1.
C. Kelly and E. Grace (eds.), Rousseau on Women, Love, and Family (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2009 [1762]), pp. 178–93).
Ibid., p. 185. See also Brain Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 272
Ibid., pp. 186–7; Martha Nussbaum, ‘Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism’, The Journal of Political Philosophy 5:1 (1997), pp. 1–25.
Ian Hunter, ‘Global Justice and Regional Metaphysics: On the Critical History of the Law of Nature and Nations’, in S. Dorsett and I. Hunter (eds.), Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire (Houndmills: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2010), p. 1.
Within the discipline, though instructively not in its mainstream, three recent exceptions to this rule stand out: Roxanne Lynn Doty, ‘Fronteras Compasivas and the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality’, Millennium 35:1 (2006), pp. 53–74
Dan Bulley, ‘Negotiating Ethics: Campbell, Ontopology and Hospitality’, Review of International Studies 32:4 (2006), pp. 645–63
Nicholas Onuf, ‘Friendship and Hospitality: Some Conceptual Preliminaries?’, Journal of International Political Theory 5:1 (2009), pp. 1–21.
Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 233.
Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, J. Chiity (trans. and ed.) (New York: AMS Press, 1863 [1758]), p. 171.
On Vattel’s uses of casuistry, see Ian Hunter, ‘Vattel’s Law of Nations: Diplomatic Casuistry for the Protestant Nation’, Grotiana 31: 1 (2010), pp. 108–40.
Samuel von Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations, B. Kermett (trans.) and Barbeyrac (ed.) (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2005 [1672]), p. 244.
Samuel von Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature, A. Tooke(trans.) and I. Hunter and D. Saunders (eds.) (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003 [1691]), p. 50n.
Martti Koskenniemi, ‘Miserable Comforters: International Relations as New Natural Law’, European Journal of International Realtions 15:3 (2009), p. 397
John Salter, ‘Grotius and Pufendorf on the Right of Necessity’, History of Political Thought 26:2 (2005), pp. 284–302.
Peter Niesen, ‘Colonialism and Hospitality’, Politics and Ethics Review 3:1 (2007), p. 92.
Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in H.B. Nisbet (trans.) and H.S. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 106.
See Denida, Adieu, p. 68; Derrida, Of Hospitality, pp. 27 and 71–3; Jacques Derrida, ‘Hostipitality’, Angelaki 5:3 (2000), pp. 3–4
Ganett W. Brown, ‘The Laws of Hospitality, Asylum Seekers and Cosmopolitan Right: A Kantian response to Jacques Derrida’, European Journal of Political Theory 9:1 (2010), pp. 308–27.
Immanuel Kant, ‘The Metaphysics of Morals’, in H.B. Nisbet (trans.) and H.S. Reiss (ed.), Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 138.
E.g. Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 38.
Pauline Kleingeld, ‘Kant’s Cosmopolitan Law’, Kantian Review 2:1 (1998), pp. 73–90.
Benhabib, The Rights of Others. See also Sharon Anderson-Gold, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001).
Niesen, ‘Colonialism and Hospitality’, p. 102. Katrin Hikschuh, Kant and Modern Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 141.
Sankar Muthu, ‘Justice and Foreigners: Kant’s Cosmopolitan Right’, Constellations 7:1 (2000), pp. 34–5.
Niesen, ‘Colonialism and Hospitality’, p. 103; Ganett W. Brown, ‘Kantian Cosmopolitan Law and the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution’, History of Political Thought 27:4 (2006), p. 664
Niesen, ‘Colonialism and Hospitality’, p. 105; cf. F.H. Hinsley, Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).
Immanuel Kant, ‘Critique of Practical Reason’, in M.J. Gregor (trans. and ed.), Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 230.
Denida, Adieu, p. 50; Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, p. 16. For exemplary recent statements of hospitality as instrumental to cosmopolitan right from a Kantian perspective, see Brown., ‘Kantian Cosmopolitan Law’ and Ganett W. Brown, ‘Moving from Cosmopolitan Legal Theory to Legal Practice: Models of Cosmopolitan Law’, Legal Studies 28:3 (2008), pp. 430–51.
Denis Diderot, ‘Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville’, in J.H. Mason and R. Wokler (trans. and ed.), Denis Diderot: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Jimmy Klausen’s ‘Of Hobbes and Hospitality in Diderot’s Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville’, Polity 37:2 (2005), pp. 167–92.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Gideon Baker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Baker, G. (2013). Right of Entry or Right of Refusal? Hospitality in the Law of Nature and Nations. In: Baker, G. (eds) Hospitality and World Politics. Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290007_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137290007_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45035-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-29000-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)