Of Spiders and Bees 187of the individual states that comprise it. States that do not wish to belong
to it are to be regarded as immature members of global society who, in
the manner of children, fail to see where their own interests lie. Conse-
quently, they can be compelled, like children, to do what is in their true
best interest— to join the world state. Th e voluntary law of nations, Wolff
went on to explain, may be thought of as the civil law, or legislation, of this
supreme state. As such, the voluntary law must be regarded as very dis-
tinctly legislative in character, and not contractual— meaning that all states
were bound by it, without exception.
Far from being under the rulership of an emperor or pope, the supreme
state was seen to be fi rmly republican. All of the members were equal in le-
gal status (though not, of course, in material strength), so that the supreme
state was “a kind of demo cratic form of government,” at least in principle.
Here we fi nd expressed, for the fi rst time, a theme that would later become
one of the cornerstones of international legal doctrine: the complete legal
equality of all states, without regard to material disparities in such areas as
wealth or power. Th is idea of the legal parity of states was, however, con-
ceded by Wolff to be more a matter of abstract principle than of reality. In
practice, the supreme state is hegemonic. Since it is impractical for all of the
states to send representatives to gather in one place, the realistic alternative
is that “what has been approved by the more civilized nations” must deter-
mine what becomes the law for the whole world.
In terms of the function that it served, Wolff ’s voluntary law was largely
on a par with that of Grotius. Its eff ect was to relax some of the strictness of
the necessary law by declining to infl ict punishments for certain violations of
it. As in Grotius’s theory, this immunity from punishments does not amount
to an affi rmative grant of true rights. “On account of the human factor,” as
Wol ff explained, “things which are illicit in themselves have to be, not indeed
allowed, but endured, because they cannot be changed by human power.”
As an example, he gave the law on resort to war. According to the necessary
law, wars can be just on one side only. Th e voluntary law, in contrast, al-
lows wars to be treated as just on both sides, so that both parties have an
equal entitlement to the rights of war.
Th e principal successor to Wolff in the rationalist tradition was the writer
who supplanted him as Germany’s best- known phi los o pher: Immanuel Kant.
Kant lived all his life in town of Königsberg in East Prus sia, though his