Abstract
On the theory of ethics propounded in this work individuals have rights and duties only as members of a collection of people who are mutually engaged to interact on ethical principles. They thereby, bind themselves to treat one another as ends — not in themselves but for one another — and hence to give equal consideration to the interests of each in the determination of the substantive ethical terms of their interaction. Ethics, on this view, is essentially reciprocal. There are no absolute or unconditional principles that require individuals to do virtuous acts independently of whatever anyone else does.
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Notes
See David Miller’s comments on world government in D. Miller (2007), National Responsibility and Global Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 25–7.
I have discussed the difference between a society and system of states with special reference to Europe 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), 42–58.
J. Rawls (1999b), The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 32–5.
Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay, Liberal Project, 85–6; J. Morsink (1999), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins and Intent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press)
I say supposedly because even Nozick, following Locke, requires that everyone enjoy opportunities for appropriation that he would have enjoyed in an original state of nature in which the Lockean proviso that enough and as good of an appropriated resource was available for others. If these no longer exist, a destitute person would have to be compensated up to the level of a baseline of welfare constituted by the Lockean proviso. R. Nozick (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell), 175–80.
In particular by Henry Shue (1996), Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence and American Foreign Policy, 2nd edn. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 70–87.
D. Held (1995), Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity)
D. Held, A. McGrew, D. Goldblatt and J. Perraton (1999), Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity).
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© 2013 John Charvet
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Charvet, J. (2013). Liberal Communitarianism from a Global Perspective. In: The Nature and Limits of Human Equality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137329165_7
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