Nr. 3 (12) anul IV / iulie-septembrie 2006 - ROMDIDAC

studii culturaleMARCOS FARIAS-FERREIRAFCH, Universidade Católica PortuguesaFrom within the universe of grand theory (II)We should look carefully at the landscape. But in so doing we shouldproceed like the axis of a wheel, following the wheel without moving.[Adriano Moreira.]There is no dictionary that can save us from the perplexity towards whichthe world has been lead by the abuse of words. But the words are there, inevery mouth: human rights, social justice, democracy, national will. The samewords and nevertheless a growing distance between what is real and what isproclaimed. Less peace in the world, less justice, less ethics. And an increasingnecessity to listen to the poets and to find out that in the inside of things doesrest what things really are.[Adriano Moreira.]CEx Ponto nr.3, 2006GROTIUS AND VITORIA: THE RATIONALIST VIA MEDIA IN IR THEORYonsidering the argument of a teleological horizon for human sociablenessdemands further investigation on what is, in the context of Adriano Moreira’sIR theory, the deeper constitution of international society, i.e. about whatultimately grounds the authority of norms and rules whose operation makesit possible to individuate the ‘routine life’ of a society formed by sovereignstates. The commitment to dialogue is the basis of the international contractualedifice. However, without moral grounding, the agreement and consensusreached by the representatives of sovereign states do not suffice in orderto understand the full scale of authority secured by norms and rules agreedupon by these actors. This means that in his view, the instrumental reasonreducing consensual acts to mere utilitarian calculation on how to maximiseindividual gains is not enough to get into the logic of rule-following withininternational society. The contractual edifice giving substance to this societyis above all the expression of the collective will to put violence and injusticeunder the authority of that kind of reason being able to acknowledge valuesas autonomous motivations for social conduct.It is my argument that in its search to ground and understand the logic ofrule following within an anarchic society, Adriano Moreira’s IR theory appealsstraightforwardly to a retrieved theory of natural law “inspired by justice andaccepted by rationality”, as he writes apropos the contractualists 1 . Furthermore,166