Abstract – The paper focuses on Kelsen’s formal interpretation of sovereignty as the core of his Philosophy of International Law and as the most important antidote to the dangerous “Neo-Hegelian” paradigm of State Sovereignty, which – through Treitschke and Lasson’s reflections on International Law –, came to us as the dominant paradigm of the western Theory of Law and State. Following the “Neo-Hegelian” conception, the State is a self-sustaining super organism, whose Willen is superior to every thinkable International Law, because the latter is in fact intended as an external State Law. Such an idea, which projects Hobbes’ bellum omnium contra omnes on the international level, still constitutes the heart of our International Relations and seems to be particularly relevant in the face of the actual and worrying return of nationalisms, sovereignisms and imperialisms, which threaten the peaceful and democratic structure of the Western World.
Keywords – Kelsen, Lasson, Sovereignty, Neo-Hegelianism, Pure Theory of Law, International Law.