A. Introduction

From Apology to Utopia is a disturbing reading experience. I first came across Martti Koskenniemi’s book of 1989 during research for my thesis on Hans Kelsen. In his monograph “Das Problem der Souveränität”, published immediately after the First World War, Kelsen attempted to destroy the central doctrinal pillars of the nineteenth century German international law discourse by exposing the ideological nature of its central doctrines, such as the concept of the sovereign will of the state, autolimitation and consent. 70 years later, the analytical programme of From Apology to Utopia deconstructed international law by exposing the inherent “political” nature of international legal discourse, interpreted as an argumentative practice. Exposing the unstable discursive boundaries between politics and international law is the central objective of this monograph. Martti Koskenniemi portrays international legal doctrine as an inherently contradictory and repetitive argumentative routine that is incapable of producing meaningful “legal” results. International lawyers somewhat tragically feel compelled to engage in this Sisyphean routine in order to maintain their professional identity.

For me, both monographs constitute historic academic caesurae, revealing deeply provocative critiques of international legal scholarship of their time. Their respective analytical tools, however, are entirely different. Yet, the approach is similar in that both authors use current philosophical approaches and political intuition to develop a critical analytical matrix that exposes the political nature of international legal discourse. Taken seriously, both monographs demand a fundamental departure from previous practices and self-perceptions and thereby pursue a highly political project. From a history-of-science-perspective, monographs that constitute a radical break with the self-perception of a discipline are often not those that develop a new constructive approach to their subject. Instead, theytend to produce an innovative methodological perspective on the argumentative practices of the discipline as a whole. Kelsen’s “Problem der Souveränität” marks the final stage of the nineteenth-century-debates, primarily German, about the construction of an objective (binding) international legal order based on the subjective “will” of sovereign states.
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