Theoria

The relationship between the nature of institutions and principles of justice and right action has always been central to political studies. It lies at the heart of normative political theory. Major changes in the perceived structure of institutions or patterns of human interaction, or significant events that challenge our political imagination, tend to heighten our awareness of this complex relationship. The last decade of the 20th century, and early years of the 21st, have witnessed many such events and changes. One need only mention Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States of America and its activities elsewhere, the United States’ response to these attacks by invading Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban and the decision by the United States—taken under false pretexts—to invade Iraq and effect ‘regime change’ there.

Political philosophy has been under the sway of a certain picture since Rawls’s A Theory of Justice was published in 1971. This picture combines the idea that the problem of justice should be approached from the direction of ideal normative theory, and that there are some anchoring ideas that secure the justificatory role of a hypothetical agreement. I think this picture and the hold it has over political philosophy is beginning to fragment. This fragmentation I think is most evident in the skepticism that has become a routine response to the Kantian idea that ‘we’ can ‘discover’ the terms of an agreement that has both a categorical force and a universal scope. But as the picture fragments we are still left with the framework and vocabulary of Rawls’s difficult and elaborate theory. The major difficulty confronting the Rawlsian project (the problem of pluralism as I will argue below) is itself defined in terms of Rawls’s conceptual language. And this serves only to obscure the real challenge and keep us ‘bewitched’ by Rawls’s narrow way of seeing issues. In being bewitched in this way we do not see that the problem of pluralism confronts Rawls’s project as a whole, rather than requiring adjustments and accommodations.

Darrel Moellendorf believes that our political choices should be guided by moral principles attending to interests of people throughout the world, that the interests of compatriots do not necessarily take priority over the interests of foreigners, that people in rich and powerful countries ought to do much more than they do now to help poor and oppressed foreigners, and that the justification of these moral demands properly expresses a perspective of equal respect for all individuals everywhere. At each of these points, he and I are fellowcosmopolitans. I greatly admire the diversity and cogency of the arguments through which he defends this cosmopolitan framework. I also admire his commitment to fill in this framework through forthright statement and ingenious defence of many specific and controversial cosmopolitan claims. Agree with him or not, he stakes out important, connected positions whose assessment is bound to clarify the nature of international justice.

In Cosmopolitan Justice Darrel Moellendorf sets out to develop a Rawlsian theory of justice applicable to the sphere of international relations broadly conceived.1 He develops his ethical theory through an exploration of the tensions which he perceives between the early work of John Rawls found in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, and his later work, The Law of Peoples.2 Moellendorf’s central claim is that in the latter work Rawls, in fundamental ways, betrays crucial cosmopolitan commitments of the theory of justice as set out in the earlier corpus. Rawls’s original project was directed towards the production of a theory which would provide us with criteria for judging the justness of the basic structure of states. That work did not deal with issues of justice within the international realm. Later, in The Law of Peoples, Rawls set out to extend his theory of justice to the international sphere. Moellendorf finds fault with Rawls’s attempt to execute this. The central problem he identifies is that Rawls failed fully to realize the implications which a liberal commitment to human rights places on what morally can be claimed by states making use of the notion of sovereignty.

Writing in the aftermath of Adolf Eichmann’s dramatic prosecution in 1961 for his role in the Nazi genocide, Hannah Arendt suggested that the ‘need for a [permanent] international criminal court was imperative’ (Arendt 1963: 270). For Arendt, Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem symbolized the unfortunate triumph of national interests over the demands of universal justice. In Arendt’s analysis, the Eichmann trial was flawed for a number of reasons, most notably because the Israeli government rejected the possibility of establishing an international criminal tribunal, claiming for itself the competence and jurisdiction for trying Eichmann. In the end, Arendt notes, the failure of the Israeli court consisted of the fact that it represented ‘one nation only’ and misunderstood Eichmann’s crimes as being inherently against the Jewish people rather than against humanity itself, that is, ‘against the human status’ (Arendt 1963: 268-270). As the subsequent occurrence of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes in countries as diverse as Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and East Timor starkly testifies, the relevance of a permanent international criminal court to contemporary world politics and international relations is undiminished more than 40 years after the Eichmann trial.

In Cosmopolitan Justice1 Darrel Moellendorf defends several substantive theses about justice by appealing to the Kantian principle of respect for persons. He claims that respect for persons has the following rough implications (among others): it requires states to enact liberal legislation; it permits them to interfere with religious or otherwise perfectionist regimes; it forbids them from restricting immigration for perfectionist ends; and it requires them to permit secession. In this article, I do not question Moellendorf’s Kantian foundation; I accept that it is of the utmost importance not to degrade the dignity of rational agents. What I do here is question the inferences from this principle to the above conclusions.

Dr Moellendorf’s book is a tightly argued, wide-ranging, well-written piece that is challenging, important and enjoyable. It is a sustained and reasonably comprehensive meditation upon global justice that is more thorough and more readable than the vast majority of comparable works. Truly it is a must for any one who takes global justice seriously. For my remarks, I wish to concentrate on his thoughts regarding justified wars and widespread institutional design at the cosmopolitan level.

Darrel Moellendorf argues that duties of justice have global scope. We share Moellendorf’s rejection of statism and his emphasis on duties of justice arising out of association in Cosmopolitan Justice. Building on Moellendorf’s view that there are cosmopolitan duties of justice, we argue that in education they are both negative and positive, requiring redistribution of educational resources and transnational educational intervention. We suggest what kinds of intervention are justifiable and required, the kinds of international structures that could regulate them, and a conception of cosmopolitan citizenship to underpin education for global citizenship.

In Cosmopolitan Justice1 Moellendorf carries on the work begun by theorists such as Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge,2 further developing a cosmopolitan model of justice. Like Beitz and Pogge, he too modifies the Rawlsian approach to support a model of global justice that is more focused on individuals rather than states and proposes much bolder principles that are to define just interaction at the international level. Moellendorf also goes further than either of these theorists has hitherto gone in showing how a cosmopolitan model of justice could actually be applied to a range of pressing problems of global justice (including immigration, protectionism, justified intervention, debt cancellation, and dealing with the costs of global warming) and this is one of the key strengths of the book. With the exception of justified intervention, I will not discuss these applications here, though Moellendorf’s treatments of all these issues contain insights worthy of more attention. Rather, my focus in this paper will be on some central theoretical aspects of what cosmopolitan justice demands of us.

I agree with many of the theses advanced by Darrel Moellendorf in his important book. The book covers just about every single issue in international ethics: an individualist theory of sovereignty; an essentially Rawlsian philosophical methodology; the justice of immigration and trade controls; the justice of intervention and war; and a theory of global equality of opportunity. Moellendorf proposes a world of liberal separate states (similar to my own proposal)1 but committed to a scheme of non-statist global redistribution run by a sort of international agency. He thus joins other liberal commentators who have reacted to John Rawls’ rejection of principles of global socioeconomic justice.2 As is well known, Rawls’ principles of international justice are anti-cosmopolitan, not just in the sense that worries Moellendorf, that is, of eschewing global redistribution of wealth, but also in the area of human rights, where Rawls has essentially renounced global liberalism.3 Moellendorf believes, like those other liberal critics, that Rawls is wrong and justice requires transfers of wealth from citizens in rich countries to those in poor countries.

It is a great honour to have Cosmopolitan Justice reviewed in the pages of this journal. Indeed, the range and quality of the reviews are terrific, in the multiple senses of that word. I regret that I do not have the opportunity to respond fully to any of the reviews. Nonetheless, I shall try to do justice to the most serious issues raised. The next section, the most abstract of five, addresses challenges to the constructivist justification in Cosmopolitan Justice as well as the nature of duties of justice in the absence of a legal framework. Although this section may be particularly interesting to students of philosophy, those whose interests are relatively more applied can skip ahead. Section III takes up the issues of sovereignty and intervention; Section IV addresses matters of distributive justice.

Revolutions, Nations, Empires: Conceptual Limits and Theoretical Possibilities, by Alexander J. Motyl. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ISBN: 0231114311. Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires, by Alexander J. Motyl. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0231121105. Reviewed by Roger Deacon

Conversations with Zizek, by Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly. Polity: Cambridge, 2004. ISBN: 0745628974 Reviewed by Richard Pithouse

Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship, by Will Kymlicka. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0199240981. Reviewed by Laurence Piper

Frantz Fanon: The Postcolonial Imagination, by Nigel Gibson. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. ISBN: 0745622615. Reviewed by Richard Pithouse

If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? by G.A. Cohen. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0674006933. Reviewed by Ben Parker

Notes on the Contributors