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The European Union has long pursued a full program of unification of the national rules on private international law. For the theoretical advantages of uniformity, created by "denazionalizing" the systematic of civil law, corresponds, howewer, a loss of meaning in terms of culture and legal values, at the expense of the identities and the political choices, that only in the national communities – in the absence of democratic processes at the European level – can still find ways of legitimate expression.Paper presented at the Conference "La dimension culturelle du droit international privé (Journée en l'honneur de Tito Ballarino)", held on June 13, 2014 in Losanna, at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law.L'Unione europea persegue da tempo un nutrito programma di uniformazione delle normative nazionali di diritto internazionale privato. Ai vantaggi teorici dell'uniformità, artificialmente creata denazionalizzando la sistematica del diritto civile, corrisponde tuttavia una perdita di senso in termini di cultura e di valori giuridici, a scapito delle identità e delle scelte politiche che solo nelle comunità nazionali – in assenza di processi autenticamente democratici a livello europeo – possono ancora trovare legittima espressione.Relazione presentata al Convegno "La dimension culturelle du droit international privé (Journée en l'honneur de Tito Ballarino)", tenutosi il 13 giugno 2014 a Losanna, presso l'Istituto svizzero di diritto comparato

'Conventional' models of how the field of international political economy should engage with ethics have proposed or assumed the normative primacy of ethical principles and often sought to add reliable empirical economic analysis so that political perspectives on economic systems, institutions and practices can result. James Brassett and Christopher Holmes (2010) have criticized such approaches for overlooking the potentially violent character of ethics as a constitu- tive discourse like any other. The present article defends the conventional method against Brassett and Holmes's critique. Focusing especially on Thomas Pogge's ethics of world poverty as Brassett and Holmes's main conventionalist target, the article argues that: (i) Brassett and Holme s's understanding of 'ethics' is seriously inadequate; (ii) Pogge's 'negative duty not to harm' principle should be maintained against Brassett and Holmes's troublingly 'political' account and facile relativist critique of Pogge's ethics; (iii) Brassett and Holmes, while conceivably critical of Pogge's global level reformist solution as superficially 'neo liberal', cannot see that their own arguably valuable proposal of radical local forms of 'resistance' can coherently complete Pogge's poverty ethics and thus confirms, rather than undermines, the conventional method. Ultimately, Brassett and Holmes's post structural attempt risks being 'violent' itself for implying a renewed international moral skepticism.