A Duty of Beneficence or a Right to Conquer? A Historical Perspective on the Concept of Hospitality (16th-18th Century)

In this paper I show how the concept of hospitality became central for natural right advocates when they claimed necessary to have legitimate motives to interact with foreign peoples. Drawing from the Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions, they managed to politicize the moral content of hospitality, while moralizing international relations. Following the concept from Vitoria to Kant, I want to underline three major theoretical moves. With Vitoria, I analyze the move from a purely theological understanding of hospitality to an almost legal-political one. First, against the usual understanding of Vitoria asserting that he favors an unconditional right of hospitality in order to justify the Spanish invasion in the Americas, I underline the peaceful prerequisite he set for any kind of hospitality. Then, while still being in a theological mode of justification, I recall how Vitoria dismisses most of the religious arguments in order to base hospitality on a political, legal and anthropological understanding of international relations. Then, I analyze the move from a duty of justice to a duty of humanity. This is particularly clear with Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf. They both insist on the principle of sociability, and share Vitoria’s concern for international hospitality. However (a) Grotius goes further by emphasizing an enforceable commercial freedom, and (b) Pufendorf makes of hospitality an imperfect duty of beneficence subject to the principle of sovereignty. The real breakup with the theological justification of natural right appears with Kant, who makes a final move from hospitality as an entirely imperfect right to a perfect right to visit and an imperfect right to settle. The concept of hospitality epitomizes this attempt to maintain both a universal right and a division of the world into sovereign states, and eventually helps Kant to switch from political moralism to moral politics.