Abstract
This chapter discusses the main non-utilitarian conceptions of global justice found in the contemporary literature. The main division is between liberal individualists and nationalists who see nations as bearers of communitarian values. Since the liberal individualists base their conception of justice on the worth inhering in the separate individual by virtue of his capacity for autonomous self-direction in accordance with a self-chosen conception of the good together with a sense of justice — capacities possessed by all human beings — one would suppose that they must be committed to a cosmopolitan understanding of the justice that applies in the global sphere. They should surely believe that all human beings have the same fundamental worth and just claims independently of their belonging to this or that particular state so that realizing justice in the global sphere must consist in moving towards a world in which these equal claims of all individuals can be met.1
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Notes
A powerful expression of this idea is to be found in S. Black (1991), ‘Individualism at an Impasse’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21/3: 347–77.
Rawls in his account talks always of peoples rather than states. His reason for this is that we can attribute moral motives to peoples — such as the motive of abiding by the law of peoples — but we cannot attribute moral motives to states. This seems to me and others to be entirely unwarranted — especially as Rawls’s notion of a people here is that of an independent political community and hence is what others standardly call a state. Because of this, I shall ignore Rawls’s own usage and talk simply of states or independent political communities. J. Rawls (1999b), The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 17
T. Nagel (2005), ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33/2: 115.
J. Rawls (1999a), A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 98–100
R. Dworkin (2000), Sovereign Virtue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1
R. Dworkin (2011), Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) 327.
S. Caney (2005), Justice Beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 4.
T. Pogge (1994), ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’, in C. Brown (ed.), Political Re-Structuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (London: Routledge), 89–122
H. Reiss (ed.) (1970), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 47
L. Ypi (2012), Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
C. Beitz (1999), Political Theory and International Relations, 2nd edn. (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 142–54
T. Pogge (1989), Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press)
B. Barry (1991), ‘Humanity and Justice in Global Perspective’, in his Liberty and Justice: Essays in Political Theory, 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 194.
D. A. J. Richards (1982), ‘International Distributive Justice’, in J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman (eds), Ethics, Economics and the Law: Nomos XXIV (New York: New York University Press), 278–82
C. Beitz (1983), ‘Cosmopolitan Ideals and National Sentiment’, Journal of Philosophy 80: 595.
Caney discusses anti-cosmopolitan conceptions of international relations based on the idea of a society or system of states. Justice, 165–71. I have discussed the issues, together with Eliza Kaczynska-Nay, especially as they bear on the promotion of universal human rights, in J. Charvet and E. Kaczynska-Nay (2008), The Liberal Project and Human Rights: The Theory and Practice of a New World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 42–59
D. Held (1995), Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity)
As by D. Miller (1995), On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 90–8.
Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay, Liberal Project, 318–49; S. Caney (2000), ‘Human Rights, Compatibility and Diverse Cultures’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 3/1: 51–76
D. Miller (2007), National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 34–43.
Margaret Moore (2001) has a judicious discussion of the idea of nations as intrinsically valuable in her The Ethics of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
A. Smith (1991), National Identity (London: Penguin Books)
J. Hutchinson and A. Smith (eds.) (1994), Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press)
Bede (1990), Ecclesiastical History of the English People, tr. Leo Sherley-Price, rev. R. E. Latham (London: Penguin Books).
J. S. Mill (1910), ‘Representative Government’, in Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government (London: J. M. Dent), 362.
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© 2013 John Charvet
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Charvet, J. (2013). Global Justice in the Contemporary Literature. In: The Nature and Limits of Human Equality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329165_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329165_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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