Deep political conflict between world powers already loomed for some time but was brutally unveiled with the current war in Ukraine. This does not mean to explain the ongoing war with cultural or political disagreement. But the different reactions around the world to the Russian invasion were telling. While ‘Western’ NATO countries immediately intervened on a political, military and explicit moral level, it is hard to reduce the very restrained positioning of most other core global players to mere geostrategic calculus. The recent ‘Ukrainian moment of truth’ challenges not only liberal post-cold-war dreams of an eternal world order built on democracy, human rights and capitalist economic flourishing (Fukuyama’s famous ‘end of history’-thesis), but questions the simple commensurability of legal cultures and values or even the idea of one universal autonomous conception of law in general.

In more than one recent political conflict the rising world powers invoked deep disagreement between so-called ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ or ‘Southern’ world views. Notwithstanding frequent tactical use of this argument, ‘comparative philosophy’ indeed acknowledges various traditions which diverge at least in some respects fundamentally from classical Western thought, i.e. Chinese, Indian, African, Arabic or Russian. Thus, the reflection on ‘global philosophy’ does not take a universal anthropological method of philosophical thinking for granted. The comparative starting points aims to inquire in the possibility of general elements of thought for a meaningful understanding in a globalized world avoiding theoretical imperialism or colonization.

Although the role of law is crucial to all modern societies and global understanding, there is few inquiries in comparative and global LEGAL philosophy. There is of course a long tradition of comparative (mainly private) law including legal methodology. And abstract theoretical inquiry in the functioning of norms to some extent surely transcends cultural differences. Yet what is missing so far is profoundly analyzing these differences, similarities and limits of commensurability in legal theories and values, legal justification and legal argumentation around the world.

This special workshop aims to sensitize to differences in fundamental conceptual, institutional and normative settings of various legal cultures. Although most of the regular IVR participants belong to the so-called Western culture or to traditions which have a close theoretical link at least if it comes to legal theory, we hope to initiate a real global dialogue on the philosophical groundings of law. What should be the role of philosophy of law in the face of contemporary clashes of worldviews? Could legal philosophy cope with deep disagreements, at least in the form of an epistemological framework? Is it possible to integrate opposing legal cultures in one dialectical global grammar of reasoning? Are there necessary links between certain legal concepts or institutions and cultural background theories? Are subjective rights inevitable for a modern understanding of law? Are some legal philosophical traditions more open to plural worldviews than others? Might a more plural or diverse account of legal philosophy increase the legitimacy and force of international law?

The workshop will circulate and present a short sketch of a manifesto on comparative and global philosophy of law in advance and invites short comments and discussion on this draft. We would ask interested scholars to send us an email up to 15 June 2022 under cristiano.moita@fu-berlin-de. Please add your institutional affiliation and some lines about your research background and interests.