The place of Vattel in both the narratives of international society and in the doctrinal histories of international law appears relatively clear and uncontested. For the theorists of international society, such as Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and John Vincent, Vattel stands full square in the pluralist camp. He upholds the idea that there can indeed exist an international society of states — ‘the great society established by nature between all nations’, as Vattel calls it. But it can only be a limited and pluralist society constructed around the goal of coexistence and embodying an ethic of difference. It is a society different in kind from that which exists within domestic society and is based on what Vattel calls the ‘natural liberty of states’ or what Andrew Linklater has labelled ‘state libertarianism’. 1 It provides a structure of coexistence, built on the mutual recognition of states as independent and legally equal members of society, on the unavoidable reliance of self-preservation and self-help, and on freedom to promote their own ends subject to minimal constraints. Its dominant values are, to quote Vattel once more, ‘the maintenance of order and the preservation of liberty’. Similarly, for Terry Nardin the concept of a society of states that emerged for the first time in the eighteenth century can be understood in terms of a ‘practical’ and opposed to a ‘purposive association’ — ‘an association of independent and diverse political communities, each devoted to its own ends and its own conception of the good’. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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