ABSTRACT

The problem with squaring an international order with states' integrity might lie with either the order or the border. Moral and political borders are congruent, and that therefore sovereign integrity morally trumps internationalism. This chapter looks at an Aristotelian viewpoint which would plausibly reject internationalism as contrary to justice, and a Hobbesian view that would simply deny that terms like justice and injustice work internationally. The phenomenon and the phenomeno/ogy of the 'global village' mean that the polis can be an entity that exists atopically. The topological limits of the polis having been abandoned, then, there is no reason why the polis should not be global. The boundaries of the polis are, rather, informed by communities of concern, which are all but unlimited in the 'global village'. As such, the relationships that underpin the polis - community of concern, aims, ends and interest - stretch outside the boundaries of the polis.