International law and the concept of Western civilization

Resumo

This article focuses on the specific impact of International law on the construction of the concept of Western Civilization. Its main argument is that Cold War gave the concept of Western a scope more restrict than it did use to have and that it did so by cutting out its collectivist inheritance and limiting the concept to its individualist cuts. The article is divided into three parts. First, it shows the modern origin and further development of individualism and collectivism as the two parts of a single Western intellectual tradition. Second, it describes how Cold War definitely broke this single Western intellectual tradition into two opposite and irreconcilable intellectual and political worlds up to the point of the banishing of collectivism as part of the Western conceptual boundaries. Third, it presents the today’s implications of the limitation of the concept of Western to Latin America, as a case of Westernized International Law.