Symposium : The Changing Structure of International Law Revisited (Part 2)

• Koskenniemi, Martti

Abstract

Geometry is the archetype of modern mind. The grid is its ruling trope… Taxonomy, classification, inventory, catalogue and statistics are paramount strategies of modern practice. Modern mastery is the power to divide, classify and allocate — in thought, in practice, in the practice of thought and in the thought of practice. Paradoxically, it is for this reason that ambivalence is the main affliction of modernity and the most worrying of its concerns.1