Reflection of Slumming It

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In a 2 -3 page essay, please use the theories of Nozick and Rawls to analyze the documentary Slumming It. In particular, what would be the analytical process for evaluating the possible housing towers that some people in Mumbai proposed for the slums? Show me Nozick and Rawl's analysis.

There should be an introduction and conclusion. The body of the essay should include the defining and describing the principles of both Nozick and Rawls. In addition, you need to apply these principles to Dharavi with specificity. Give me a paragraph per principle. In a special way, demonstrate to me that you understand the theory of Rawls who uses his own vocabulary at times. You will need to include the Maximin Rule, Original Position, and the Veil of Ignorance. If you are still unclear about these theories from the text book, see the additional resource I listed from the book Business Ethics. Submit the assignment below using Turnitin.



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Poverty, Famine, and Rawls 1. 2. Goals: Understand the concepts of egalitarianism Be able to apply the egalitarian analysis to globalization To Do: 1. 2. 3. Read the required texts Apply a Rawls and Nozick analysis to Dharavi in a 2-3 page essay Complete the course evaluation Ludwig Deutsch, The Sahleb Vendor, Cairo (1886) If the concept of the human rights is of relatively recent origin, just the opposite could be said about the concept of justice: It is a moral concept with a rich and long history, stretching back before the time of Plato and Aristotle and running as a constant thread from ancient thought to the twenty-first century. No one in the twentieth century stated the importance of justice more eloquently than JohnRawls in the famous opening paragraph of his 1971 classic, A Theory of Justice: Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise, laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore, in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising. These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice. Justice, Rawls is telling us, is fundamental to social institutions and the laws that govern institutions and people. But what exactly is justice? This is a long-debated question by philosophers and jurists and political leaders, and our consideration of justice. Rawls has had a profound impact on contemporary moral and political philosophy. His most important work, A Theory of Justice, was first published in 1971, but parts of it had already been in circulation in preliminary drafts and in journal articles for several years earlier. After publication, it established the conceptual landscape within which discussions of justice were to occur, at least in the English-speaking literature. You could agree with Rawls or you could disagree with him, but you couldn't ignore him. He like Nozick taught at Harvard and died the same year in 2002. Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. 4 POLITICAL THEORY FOR GLOBAL ETHICS INTRODUCTION Many, but not all, global ethicists and proponents of global understandings of ethics and justice are “cosmopolitans”. Essentially this means that they reject positions in international relations or moral theory that limit the scope of duty and obligations to a particular community or geographical location and that they regard all individuals as equal members of the global moral community. There are global ethicists who do not regard all individuals as equal members of the global community: for instance they might make distinctions in terms of nationality, culture or gender, or they might regard the global community as less important than national communities. Thinkers like this may still be global ethicists in terms of being able to “do” global ethics, if they still consider all global actors in their moral decision-making (even if they do not accord all persons the same weight in their reasoning). In other words, if thinkers apply the “global in scope” criterion outlined in Chapter 1 then they can contribute to the global-ethics debate. In Chapter 3 we considered universalism and the moral theories we can use to address the issues of global ethics. The moral theories we considered – ultilitarianism, Kantianism and virtue ethics – originate from the disciplines of ethics and moral philosophy. These provide the background you need to do global ethics; they are the first tools of your “ethical toolbox”. This chapter adds to that toolbox theories of justice and draws not only on moral philosophy, but also on political philosophy and theories of international relations. We discovered in Chapter 3 that which moral theory you use changes the way you see the facts, both in terms of what facts you can see and with regard to the priority you give them, and this is no less true of which political approach you adopt. Just as your moral theory has an impact on what you believe to be morally important and what you deem good or right moral conduct, so the political theory you adopt provides the framework within which you conceive of what is just and the limits of justice. In other words, the political framework influences the scope within which you apply your moral theory, and together the moral and political theories you adopt will determine whether you are a global ethicist or not and what type of global ethicist you are. The main question when considering global ethics from this political perspective is: what are the bounds of justice and morality? For example, do political borders, such as state, regional or national borders, have bearings on our moral duties? Do we have more duties to those whom we have more in common with, for instance, fellow nationals? If moral duties are influenced by political structures and boundaries, then are current systems fit for purpose? In short, what, if any, is the ethical significance of borders? This chapter will explore the different ways political theorists answer these questions and whether or not such answers are compatible with global ethics. We shall not only consider cosmopolitanism (the view most closely associated with global ethics), but also a range of competitor views. It is also important to remember that while the cosmopolitan voice may be very strong in global ethics (and it is likely that all cosmopolitans would be happy to call themselves “global ethicists”), you do not have to be a cosmopolitan to claim to be a global ethicist and certainly not to add to the global-ethics debate. For instance, some global ethicists hold society of states perspectives and nationalist perspectives, and yet still endorse some global duties. Some of these views might be considered “mixed” views or “weak cosmopolitanism”, because they subscribe to cosmopolitan views in some areas (say perhaps, in terms of meeting basic needs or a duty to respond to disasters or emergency situations) but not in others. The only view that is completely incompatible with any global-ethics EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 57 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. approach, however weak that view might be, is the realist view. The realist denies any conception of a global moral community and any global duties of justice and it is hard to imagine how a global ethicist could take this position without being self-contradictory. The theories presented here and in Chapter 3 provide the key theoretical tools the ethicist employs to address the pressing concerns of contemporary global ethics (Box 4.1). This is not to say that once you understand these moral and political theories you have all you need to “do” global ethics. On the contrary, you will need to keep adding to your toolbox – you will need more theoretical tools: for instance, those provided in the next chapter on human rights; more empirical knowledge about the world (e.g. that provided in Chapter 6 on the actual functioning of the systems of global governance); and most importantly, as you progress in global ethics, you will add to your toolbox your real experience about how these theories work in practice and how practical cases of global ethics influence how you interpret your theories. This said, when you combine the theories of Chapter 3 and those of this chapter you will have the basic tools you need to begin to do global ethics. These theories are your starting-point. What the rest of the book does, particularly the later chapters, is to consider in more detail the core topics of global ethics, and in these chapters you will begin to see how these global-ethics tools are used in practice in relation to poverty, hunger, health and war. More importantly, as you study such issues and find your own examples of global injustice, you will come to see, not only how others have used these theories, but how you could use them to put together your own arguments and actually do global ethics (rather than merely read, write or talk about other writers doing global ethics). Box 4.1 The global-ethics toolbox • Moral, political and rights theories. • Understandings of global governance and global institutions. • Practical experience. This chapter introduces cosmopolitanism and analyses current cosmopolitan approaches. It considers criticisms of the cosmopolitan position, including realism, nationalism and internationalism, and the difficulties in applying cosmopolitan approaches to current global institutions. It also considers the nature of justice and, in particular, how broad the “scope of justice” is. As discussed in Chapter 1, to do global ethics at all, one must believe that the scope of justice is global, in that all global actors must be considered in moral decision-making. There are various ways in which this criterion can be met: for instance, strong cosmopolitans believe that all individuals (irrespective of race, nationality, gender and class) should be taken into account in exactly the same way; weak cosmopolitans consider all actors, but believe that there are differences in how individuals should be taken into account. For example, they might think that although there are some duties of global justice, states are still important. COSMOPOLITANISM We shall begin by considering cosmopolitanism, which, as its name suggests, holds that there is a “moral sphere” that transcends national or cultural boundaries, and hence that moral obligations are global in scope. We shall look at versions of cosmopolitanism and some views opposed to it, and place these views in the context of the debate about global justice. Just as there are many different types of utilitarianism, Kantianism and virtue theory, so there are many types of cosmopolitanism (many of which we shall come across as we explore the application these theories in later chapters). The term “cosmopolitan” has been used in general terms both positively and negatively: to EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 58 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. denote a well-travelled, multiculturally aware, worldly and experienced person – a good thing; and to insult foreigners and dangerous outsiders (as it was used of Jews and Bolsheviks by the Nazis) – a bad thing. The term “cosmopolitan” originates with the Stoics and is derived from “cosmos” meaning “world” and “polis” meaning “state” or “city”. The Stoics, from whom the term “stoical” is derived, were a school of ancient Athenian philosophers founded in the third century bce, who argued for the universal reason of nature (logos ). In keeping with this view of nature and humans’ part in it, the Stoics claimed that they were citizens of the world, and identified themselves with, and owed allegiance to, all humanity, not just their local geographical, religious, ethnic or cultural group. The Stoics’ conviction that they were “citizens of the world” still captures the essence of contemporary cosmopolitanism. While there are many different versions of cosmopolitanism, they all consider the moral sphere to be the global sphere in that their community is in some sense the global community and that there are at least some duties of justice that extend beyond national or state boundaries. The first defining feature of cosmopolitanism is that the moral sphere is global for at least some obligations: that there are some duties that go beyond national borders (and for some strong cosmopolitans all duties of justice are global). The second is the emphasis on the individual: the conviction that it is the individual that has moral worth, rather than entities such as family, ethnic, cultural, religious or national groups (or at least that these are only morally significant in that they are made up of individuals who have individual moral worth). The third feature of cosmopolitanism is equality: all individuals have equal moral worth. These three elements are standard in different definitions of cosmopolitanism. A commonly cited definition is that of Pogge, one of the foremost contemporary global ethicists (Box 4.2). Not surprisingly there are similarities between the universalism we looked at in Chapter 3 and cosmopolitan theories, because all are concerned with the global scope of morality and affirm the moral worth of all individuals. Indeed, Kant’s thinking was highly influential for contemporary cosmopolitans, who are often considered to be putting Kant’s notions of universalizability and rationality into the theory and practice of the political arena. Consider also Kant’s imperative that we should never treat persons only as means, but always as “ends in themselves”, which clearly affirms the moral status of each individual. Likewise, the impartiality of utilitarianism fits well with the second criterion of cosmopolitanism. When we come to Chapter 7 we shall see how utilitarianism and strong cosmopolitanism combine in the work of Singer, and his arguments that we all have global duties to act to alleviate poverty. Box 4.2 Cosmopolitanism according to Thomas Pogge According to Pogge, cosmopolitanism comprises: “First, individualism: the ultimate units of concern are human beings, or persons … Second, universality: the status of ultimate unit of concern attaches to every living human being equally – not merely to some sub-set, such as men, aristocrats, Aryans, whites, or Muslims. Third, generality: this special status has global force. Persons are ultimate units of concern for everyone – not only for their compatriots, fellow religionists, or such like.” (Pogge 1994a: 89–90) Despite these similarities, it is important to note that the moral theories of Chapter 3 and these political theories are not directly parallel. For example, cosmopolitans do not focus on issues of impartiality and its requirements in quite the same way that moral theorists (of whatever variety, whether utilitarian, Kantian or virtue theorists) do. For instance, the debate about partiality and impartiality in moral philosophy focuses on whether or not you can have special obligations by virtue of the nature of your particular and often personal relationships. Prominent in these discussions are family relations, for instance duties to your children or parents, and professional relationships, for instance duties of teachers to their students and doctors to their patients. When cosmopolitans argue that all individuals should be treated as morally equal they are not denying such special relationships (as someone defending impartiality in moral theory would). But the focus of cosmopolitans is political, rather than personal, and therefore personal relationships are not their primary EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 59 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. concern. Cosmopolitan theorists focus on the content and weight of obligations across state boundaries. Thus, while parallel in some ways, these debates are not the same. In moral discourse the focus is on duties of individual agents to other individual agents (as we shall see in detail when we look at Singer’s utilitarian approach to addressing global poverty), whereas in political discourse obligations are seen primarily in terms of political structures. CASE STUDY 4.1 Cosmopolitanism and the sale of body parts In order to explore how cosmopolitanism and its competitors function we shall now use the example of selling body parts (see Chapter 2, pp. 19–23). Moral and political reasoning in relation to the sale of body parts In order to consider cosmopolitan responses to the sale of body parts, a brief comment on the relation between moral and political approaches and between the theories of this chapter and Chapter 3 is useful. It is important to remember that the “cosmopolitan” aspect of the response is only part of the response. How global ethicists will address the sale of body parts will depend on their moral, as well as political theoretical, convictions. For instance, if we think back to Chapter 3, whether a cosmopolitan thinker is utilitarian, deontological or a virtue ethicist will affect his or her final position. Kantians will either accept or oppose the sale of body parts according to whether they believe that the action is intrinsically right, asking questions such as “Is this treating human beings as ends in themselves?” or “Is this universalizable?” A utilitarian will consider whether selling body parts leads to more or less overall happiness. Either of these moral philosophical approaches could be relevant to the global debate and – as discussed in Chapter 3 – if one takes the universalizablity criterion of Kantianism or the impartiality criterion of utilitarianism seriously then both should be making global claims. However, these moral theories begin with the actions of individual moral agents: is it right for individuals to sell their kidneys? While such reasoning should always take account of all persons, the starting-point is focused on the individual. By contrast, because of the third and fourth criteria of cosmopolitanism – that it is global in scope and considers political structures and institutions – the cosmopolitan approach is different, in that it is overtly concerned to address the relationships of groups and institutions as well as individuals, and in addition it focuses on structural networks and frameworks of governance as well as individual duties. Therefore, as well as focusing on the rightness and wrongness of individual actions, cosmopolitanism considers the political and practical aspects of carrying out such actions. For example, cosmopolitans (and political philosophers in general) will often consider how rights are best attained and how duties can be fulfilled and needs met as well as what those rights and duties might be. Accordingly, it is no surprise that cosmopolitans concern themselves primarily with the institutions that are responsible for ensuring moral practices and the political and legal mechanisms by which justice can be attained. This difference in language and focus (not content) will become clearer when we consider the institutional focus of some particular cosmopolitan thinkers, including Pogge and Moellendorf, both here and in later chapters. The concerns of moral and political philosophers are not distinct, but overlap. Good moral philosophers will consider the impact their reasoning has on groups and should consider how judgements about individuals influence issues of structure, governance, policy and practice. And, as we saw in Chapter 1, the need to connect theory to practice and for practice to be influenced by theory is the third component of global ethics. Likewise, then, good political philosophers will connect their work on international relations and the duties of institutions with the individual agents who make up those states and nations. For most who are trained in either moral or political philosophy (rather than in global ethics directly) the starting-point will be a little different: one beginning with the individual agent, the other with political structures. As we have discussed, to do global ethics we must do both and connect individual and group action. It is worth noting that in some theories it is impossible to separate the two. For instance, virtue ethics focuses on the virtuous person, but considers that for people to be virtuous the institutions and governance mechanisms must also be virtuous. Given this, the cosmopolitan (and indeed all political thinkers) will focus not only on whether it is right, permissible or good for a certain person to sell their organs in this particular instance, but they will immediately consider the political and governance implications. Thus with regard to organ trade they are likely to discuss not only what is morally permissible, but how such trade is to be effectively regulated and monitored (if permitted) and, if not permitted, how vulnerable persons are to be protected from black and grey markets in trade and pressures of exploitation. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 60 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. A cosmopolitan approach to the selling of body parts From our initial discussion of cosmopolitanism we can begin to sketch what would be the elements of a cosmopolitan response to a market in human body parts. In order to show the difference between cosmopolitan and other views most clearly we shall consider a strong form of cosmopolitanism: the view that all duties of justice are global duties. Borders are regarded as morally insignificant, so national or regional approaches are unjust. This goes against the view expressed by Charles Erin and John Harris (2003), who propose a strictly regulated system of offering financial incentives for organ “donation” that “would be confined to a self governing geopolitical area such as a nation state or indeed the European Union”. We shall return to this discussion in Chapter 9. A first point to consider is which ethical approach should be adopted. For instance, a deontological cosmopolitan will believe that selling organs is right or wrong depending on questions such as whether or not kidney sale respects persons. This will not be considered in terms of one particular case, but will ask whether or not persons can be respected in the requisite institutions. Here the global criterion and the political criterion are clearly active. For instance, let us consider the case of egg sale. A non-cosmopolitan ethicist who is considering egg sale in the US may decide that, overall, egg sale is justified once a number of conditions are met, for instance that a “fair price” is set and that it is clear that egg vendors have given their fully informed consent and that they are guaranteed appropriate medical care both during and following the procedure. Obviously there are many problems with such a view, for instance regarding the possibility of a fair price. But, these problems are profoundly exacerbated when one takes a strong cosmopolitan view. A strong cosmopolitan must consider the global and political implications of this, which changes the issues dramatically. For instance the issue of a fair price is compounded when one considers the poverty of many who are selling their body parts and the current black and grey market. Brazil, Egypt, India, Moldova, Pakistan, the Philippines and Romania are among the world’s leading providers of trafficked organs. In these countries eggs and organs are purchased from live donors. Given the wealth inequalities between these countries and the countries organ purchasers come from, the impossibility of developing a global fair price increases the ethical dangers of such a market. Globally, dangers such as exploitation and inducement become far greater than if, for instance, the US market is considered in isolation. Likewise, the difficulty in ensuring standards of health care and appropriate accountability if vendors and purchasers are travelling between countries is far more problematic globally. Such considerations show us that the cosmopolitan commitment does not mean just that duties and rights (for instance, perhaps, property rights in one’s own body or reproductive rights) must be extended to be globally applicable, but the global-in-scope criterion might, in fact, affect what is deemed morally acceptable. Therefore a cosmopolitan and a non-cosmopolitan who endorse the same moral theory might come to different conclusions about whether or not the sale of body parts is permitted. For instance in the case of kidney-selling, the cosmopolitan might be convinced that the extreme nature of global inequalities makes the dangers of legalized organ sale too great for it be considered (even if, on a national level, the dangers might be manageable). Consider the fourth criterion, that of political structures. Suppose the strong cosmopolitan concluded that the dangers are extreme but, even so, the crisis of scarce organs and the long waiting lists for life-saving transplant treatment are so severe that sale should be permitted. They might decide (on consequential grounds because it would increase happiness, or on Kantian grounds because it was respecting persons by saving lives) that kidney sale was justified; then, however, they would proceed to address the political issues. Questions would include: how can a market in organs be constructed so as to avoid as many of the dangers as possible? Here considerations about institutions and structures would be crucial. Remember, adopting cosmopolitanism does not lead to only one outcome; a strong cosmopolitan could endorse or reject the sale of body parts. What it does require is that certain issues are considered, issues that all ethicists do not take into account sufficiently: for instance the global nature of the moral community and the political structures required. We shall return to the sale of body parts later in the chapter and explore how particular types of non-cosmopolitans approach the issue. When doing global ethics it is easy to assume that cosmopolitan and global approaches dominate. However, this is not the case. In fact, many thinkers endorse explicitly anti-cosmopolitan positions and even more endorse weak versions of cosmopolitanism. In the case of body parts the current reality is extremely non-cosmopolitan. There is no global legislation about whether or not body parts can be bought and sold and as a result there is an increasing phenomenon of “medical tourism”, where people travel from one jurisdiction to another to buy what is illegal in their own country. The final feature of cosmopolitanism, which is little discussed in political theory (perhaps because it is assumed), is that it focuses on the political realm. This is of importance in global ethics where, as discussed EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 61 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. in Chapter 1, we are concerned not only with the political realm, but also with individual and personal demands of global ethics, and also duties of other non-political actors, such as NGOs and civil society. Hence the need to combine moral theories with political theories. The differences between universalism and cosmopolitanism are ones of focus rather than of content. In some instances the arguments are the same: for example, often cosmopolitans defend universal value claims using similar arguments to those of Chapter 3 against cultural relativism. Yet, while these theories overlap and share both origins and primary tenets, and indeed often theorists, the difference of focus is at times important for understanding the arguments people are using and the claims they are making in a given circumstance. These differences will become clearer as we explore different versions of cosmopolitanism; for now, cosmopolitanism can be summed up by four criteria (see Box 4.3). Box 4.3 Cosmopolitan views For a view to be cosmopolitan: • the individual must be the key unit of ethical concern; • all individuals/every individual must be equivalent units of ethical concern; • it must apply globally; • the primary focus is the political. These four claims commit you not to a position where all obligations of justice are global, but rather to a more minimal view that there are at least some global obligations that go beyond national borders. The view that there are some, however minimal, global obligations of justice has been termed “weak cosmopolitanism”. By contrast, “strong cosmopolitanism” holds that the global sphere is the only moral sphere: that to consider any lesser sphere is unjust and immoral. On this view, all duties of justice are global duties, because national or regional borders are morally insignificant and ethically irrelevant. For the strong cosmopolitan principles of justice that apply within a society or nation should apply globally, because when it comes to deciding who gets what in terms of goods, resources and rights, there are no moral grounds for preferring one group, race, nation or society over another. Perhaps most simply put, nationality (and many other forms of group membership) is a mere accident of birth and of no moral significance whatsoever. Accordingly, cosmopolitans endorse a number of different views depending on how strong or weak their cosmopolitan commitments are and on the number and type of duties that they believe are global. Therefore, to understand what adopting any particular type of cosmopolitan theory entails in practice, we need to explore different types of cosmopolitanism in a little more detail (Box 4.4). Simply because you endorse moral cosmopolitanism of one sort or another, this does not entail any particular commitment to how this should be put into practice, for example, in terms of global governance or institutions. Some argue for institutional and legal cosmopolitanism and claim that the moral claims of cosmopolitanism require the establishment of global institutions to enforce and administer the duties and responsibilities that moral cosmopolitanism entails. But it is important to remember that embracing cosmopolitan claims with regard to ethics does not necessarily commit you to any global institutional political commitments (although those who endorse strong theories of cosmopolitanism often argue that the logic of cosmopolitan theory must lead to such practical endorsements if it is to be effective). We shall return to this issue in Chapter 6. Box 4.4 Different versions of cosmopolitanism • Weak: Some moral obligations go beyond borders and apply to all persons. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 62 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. • Strong: All moral obligations go beyond borders and apply to all persons. • Moral: All individuals have equal moral status. • Institutional: Global institutions, structures and associations (not just individuals) are required to fulfil the obligations of global justice. We shall return to Case Study 4.1 and explore these issues in more detail both later in this chapter, when we look at non-cosmopolitan reasoning about body parts, and in Chapter 9, when we explore bioethical dilemmas. Before we do this, though, we shall consider in a little more detail theories of justice and how cosmopolitans extend the “bounds” of justice from states and to the global community. We shall begin by outlining Rawls’s account of justice and its important place in the development of global ethics. RAWLS’S THEORY OF JUSTICE To understand the emergence of global ethics in the past few decades we need to understand contemporary approaches to justice as a key focal point of political theory and theorizing. To do this one must consider the work of John Rawls on justice. It is Rawls, particularly in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, who has informed the most prominent contemporary theories of global justice and been especially influential on the work of current cosmopolitan theorists and proponents of global ethics, including Brock, Caney, Moellendorf and Pogge. So although Rawls himself did not consider his theory of justice to apply globally, it is his theory and his proposed principles of justice that have inspired much current cosmopolitan thinking. Rawls’s A Theory of Justice sets out principles of justice that are intended to be adopted by all. Rawls argues that fair principles of justice are those that would be agreed in the original position (Box 4.5). The original position is a hypothetical agreement that Rawls proposed as a means to work out what the principles of justice should be and to ensure that once determined they would be binding. Rawls claimed that principles derived from the original position were those that all free and rational persons concerned with their own self-interest would agree to. Once the principles had been decided in this way, then, they would be applied to all further situations to determine the just or fair solution. These principles could then be used to constitute the foundation of a just and rational society. Box 4.5 Rawls’s “original position” “This original position is not, of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterised so as to lead to a certain conception of justice. Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I will even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all are similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to favour his particular condition, the principles of justice are the result of fair agreement or bargain.” (Rawls 1999a: 11) The original position is essentially a thought experiment that Rawls believed resulted in fair principles of justice that would be accepted by all. In the thought experiment, those who are considering what is just are blinded to their own situation in order that they come up with fair principles for all, rather than biased EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 63 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. principles that benefit people and groups in one situation and circumstance rather than another. Key to the original position’s claim to fairness in the design of the principles of justice is the veil of ignorance. Crucially, those behind the veil of ignorance do not know if they are rich or poor, strong or weak, black or white, male or female and so on. Essentially the aim is to remove any concern that arises as a result of a person’s actual situation or social circumstances in order to ensure that the final principles are unprejudiced. The veil of ignorance strips individuals of their particular characteristics, biases and concerns and assures that, rather than cater to their own particular needs and attempt to skew the system to benefit themselves or their own group, principles of justice that are fair to all will be devised. The claim is that the veil of ignorance makes the principles of justice free from economic, social, cultural, religious, gender and class biases. In Rawls’s (1999a) words, “the veil of ignorance ensures that all are equal in the original position”. In Rawls’s theory the first principles of justice are determined behind the veil of ignorance. These principles are then used to resolve all future issues of justice and to reform institutions. Once the foundational and original principles are agreed, they are to be applied in further hypothetical situations in order to develop more detailed rules and social structures. According to this picture, then, just institutions and social structures are those that conform to these principles of justice and which would have been agreed by rational persons behind the veil of ignorance. Moreover, and very importantly, he argues that because the principles agreed on are rational, chosen by rational individuals, they can be explained and justified. Rawls’s principles of justice Rawls argues that there are two principles of justice (Box 4.6) that those in the original position would choose: equality regarding basic freedoms and the difference principle. Principles of justice, then, are first about equality and, second, prohibit actions, practices and institutions that further disadvantage the already most disadvantaged. In effect the “difference principle” is a kind of minimum baseline that is intended to prevent a person becoming more disadvantaged than they already are. According to this principle, an action that makes the already poorest and most disadvantaged more disadvantaged is unjust. The difference principle does not rule out advantaging the already advantaged, but it allows this only if it also improves the position of the disadvantaged. If this is not the case then the action is not acceptable. Rawls intends that the first principle of justice will secure the equality of citizens and their liberties and the second will secure fair distribution of wealth and positions of power. Therefore each principle covers a range of issues: the first principle of equality includes issues ranging from political liberty to the freedom to hold property and the second is concerned with distributive justice and the structural and governance mechanisms by which such justice can be assured (Box 4.7). Box 4.6 Rawls’s principles of justice The first principle of justice “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.” (1999a) The second principle of justice “Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both a) to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle) b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.” EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 64 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. (1999a) Box 4.7 Features of Rawls’s principles The first principle: Equality of “basic liberties of citizens” • Political liberty (the right to vote and be eligible for public office). • Freedom of speech and assembly. • Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. • Freedom of the person and the right to hold property. • Freedom from arbitrary arrest. The second principle: Fair distribution • Fair distribution of income and wealth. • Fair organization of authority, responsibility and chains of command and distribution of positions therein. The scope of Rawls’s principles of justice and the fact they include commitments to civil liberties as well as to distributive justice require that issues of practice are addressed as well as theory. Accordingly, a pressing question is how the principles of justice are to be implemented. For Rawls, the principles apply fundamentally to what he calls the “basic structure” of society: that is, the key institutions that define rights and shape the way we can and cannot live our lives in a society; in other words, to the structure of society and the governance mechanisms, for instance, legal frameworks and political institutions. Examples Rawls uses are: the legal institutions of the protection of free thought and liberty of conscience; the economic institutions of competitive markets and private property; and the social institution of the family. Put simply, such institutions to a great extent determine who gets what, and so should be the primary subject of the principles of justice. This approach means that concerns of justice are focused on the institutions, procedures and policies that affect the practical realities of who gets what and how free real individuals actually are. As we shall see, these elements of Rawls have been taken up by contemporary global ethicists. Rawls’s methodology, and the position he seeks to establish by using it, is expressly liberal. The focus of the original position thought experiment is on formulating principles that then ensure a fair arrangement for all persons and liberty for each of them. This approach has been widely critically discussed, and one problem worth mentioning is that it appears to overlook the social relationships in which the hypothetical parties will inevitably end up in actual society. Rawls says that although the parties are divested of knowledge of their particular social role or status, the parties must know that there are all sorts of different roles and statuses, one of which each will come to occupy. But could a party in the original position not rightly worry not just about which particular position she is going to occupy but also about the relationship of her position to other positions, in other words about what society and her relationships within it will be like? The question then is whether the parties would choose quite the principles Rawls thinks they would, and we consider this question later in the chapter when discussing a global application of Rawls’s idea by Brock. But the worry about social relationships also underpins a more general concern about the conception of the individual person in Rawls’s and other liberal positions; namely, whether it conceives of moral persons in an unrealistic and undesirably isolated and individualistic way. We come to this kind of criticism in Chapter 11 in the discussion of feminism and the ethics of care. Rawls and global justice EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 65 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Despite the importance of Rawls’s work as an inspiration and basis for many contemporary accounts of justice, Rawls himself does not offer an account of global justice. Interestingly, Rawls considers that the principles of justice apply only in the domestic realm and within borders. For Rawls, international justice, which he addresses in his later work The Law of Peoples, consists not in the application of his two principles of justice directly to individuals and the basic structures of societies in the global realm, but in respect for a minimal set of human rights. Rawls sees the global ethical realm as a “society of peoples”. Essentially, then, Rawls limits the global application of his account of justice to the respecting of peoples rather than individuals globally. On this view “peoples”, not individuals, are the moral loci in the international realm. Such an account wholly conflicts with the founding premises of cosmopolitan thinking – that all individuals count equally – and particularly with strong cosmopolitan thinking for which borders are morally irrelevant. In fact, Rawls offers essentially two accounts of justice: one contained in the principles of justice and one concerned with global justice. His account of global justice, unlike his theory of justice, is state-centred: no longer do all individuals count equally behind the veil of ignorance. Rather, he offers a separate set of eight principles for the governance of the international order (see Box 4.8). This approach is state-centred: states themselves are, on this view, bound by a common set of moral rules. This is similar to a “society of states”, an approach we shall discuss in a later section of this chapter, but what is important to note now is that this approach is markedly different from the one he espouses for determining principles of justice within states. The issue of the importance of justice in other states is one that Moellendorf raises in his book Cosmopolitan Justice (2002). Moellendorf wonders whether a society-of-states-type approach is really compatible with Rawls’s view. He draws attention to Rawls’s sixth principle of international morality: that states must honour human rights. Honouring human rights is, of course, more limited than the principles of justice that Rawls proposes for governing domestic justice; but even this goes beyond upholding the morality of the international realm according to a society-of-states model. To ask about whether human rights are honoured is to express concerns for individuals within other states and to fail to fully respect state values of independence and non-interference. While the concern for human rights might be limited, and perhaps not equivalent to concerns for the rights of co-nationals, it is an instance of individuals being units of ethical concern rather than states. So if some concern about individuals is permitted on the international model, why does this not extend to full concern? Moellendorf’s (2002) question is: “why not global ‘justice as fairness’: i.e. why not global justice according to Rawls’s two original, ‘domestic’, principles of justice?” Box 4.8 Rawls’s principles of international morality • Peoples are free and independent, and their freedom and independence are to be respected by other peoples. • Peoples are to observe treaties and undertakings. • Peoples are equal and are parties to the agreements that bind them. • Peoples are to observe the duty of non-intervention (except to address grave violations of human rights). • Peoples have a right of self-defence, but no right to instigate war for reasons other than self-defence. • Peoples are to honour human rights. • Peoples are to observe certain specified restrictions in the conduct of war. • Peoples have a duty to assist other peoples living under unfavourable conditions that prevent their having a just or decent political and social regime. Rawls’s conception of justice, despite the limited nature of his own theory of international justice, has inspired many cosmopolitans to expand his ideas to the global sphere. Cosmopolitan thinkers have attempted to answer Moellendorf’s question, and have attempted to apply Rawls’s two principles of justice globally. In EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 66 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. such theories the “original position” is thought of as being a global position rather than one within a state. Beitz adopts this kind of approach to ethics in his book Political Theory and International Relations (1999). This approach begins with the cosmopolitan rejection of the moral significance of national boundaries or borders. For cosmopolitans these are simply empirical accidents and do not have any moral significance. Accordingly, they should not have any weight in moral reasoning and certainly they present no limit to our moral and social duties. Therefore if we apply Rawls’s argument for the “original position” globally we should take no account of borders. Thus the parties in the original position behind the veil of ignorance should not only not know where they will stand in a particular society (in terms of wealth, position, gender, etc.) but in addition should not know which society they will be part of. The argument is that the veil of ignorance can be used to remove bias between societies just as easily as it can be used to remove bias within societies. Using this line of argument, Beitz claims that the principles of justice (especially the difference principle, which addresses socioeconomic inequalities) would and should be chosen from a hypothetical “global original position”. His claim is that shifting the scope from the national to the global does not affect the content of the principles, which are in fact appropriate global principles. Moreover, he argues that the argument works with global individuals and not with states. To apply the difference principle to states is to fail to take into account economic diversity within states. He claims that this supports a cosmopolitan view rather than a society-of-states view, because “it seems obvious that an international difference principle applies to persons in the sense that it is the globally least advantaged representative person (or group of persons) whose position is to be maximised” (1999). Moellendorf and global associations Moellendorf takes a not dissimilar approach to Beitz. In his book Cosmopolitan Justice, Moellendorf uses Rawls’s theory to defend – against Rawls’s law-of-peoples view – the global application of his two principles of justice. The form of cosmopolitanism that Moellendorf adopts is institutional cosmopolitanism. Institutional cosmopolitanism is based on a distinction between moral duties in general and duties of justice. Thus Moellendorf is a theorist who distinguishes between “justice” and “ethics”. As we discussed in Chapter 1, global ethics embraces duties of both individuals and institutions. However, Moellendorf, from a political philosophy background, finds the distinction helpful because it allows him to separate out those dilemmas that can be addressed structurally from other moral dilemmas. He argues that a failure to distinguish between duties of justice and other moral duties has resulted in confusion for some forms of cosmopolitanism, particularly as regards the moral duties someone owes to those close to them (e.g. duties to family or compatriots), rather than duties of justice. Hence, by separating the justice and other moral duties in this way, he is making sure that the cosmopolitan commitment to respecting all individuals irrespective of place of birth and status is not confused with the moral debate about impartiality and special duties (as discussed in Chapter 3). Duties of justice do arise in general from moral duties in the sense that if persons in general did not have moral duties then there could be no duties of justice. Yet, duties of justice are different from such moral duties in that they are socially acquired and regulated: they require association as a necessary prerequisite. Moellendorf focuses not on the duties of individuals, but on the duties of institutions and on public and policy structures and on mechanisms of governance. Public institutions should not prefer one group or class of persons above others, because this would suggest unfair discrimination. Moellendorf’s distinction between moral duties of individuals and duties of social justice establishes the importance of associations and institutions in his picture. He argues that if there is no association between different persons and groups then there would be no duties of justice. Institutions are required to implement justice; hence his second claim that duties of justice are often carried out indirectly. For Moellendorf, then, justice is concerned with negotiating and regulating the associations of public life with the appropriate principles, rules and practices. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 67 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Global associations Given Moellendorf’s claims about the nature of duties of justice there must be an appropriate global association that meets the institutional requirements. Moellendorf argues that the appropriate association already exists: the global economic order. He argues that this association has evolved along with capitalism and the globalization of markets, and that it is an association that necessarily connects all individuals throughout the globe. For Moellendorf, the rise of the “global economy” and the fact that the international network of commerce is no longer structured around the insular economies of particular nations creates a much wider, global, association that influences everyone affected by it. He argues that because economic impact is not confined to nations or particular societies, nor are duties of justice. Consider, for example, the number of consumer goods that Western societies import, thus creating and sustaining a demand for them. Often the relatively low (for Western consumers) price of these items depends directly on their being produced by sweatshop labour in other countries. For Moellendorf, if there is an injustice in this situation then it is clearly a matter of global injustice: one that implicates persons or institutions across the world and not just those within one society, nation, political state or people. The effectiveness of his argument for institutional cosmopolitanism depends on whether this non-voluntary global association exists. Moellendorf argues that it does and moreover that it is unavoidable. The global economic order is something individuals and states cannot realistically choose not to partake in; therefore participation is involuntary. We have to be part of this association whether we like it or not. Moreover, this association directly affects the moral interests of almost everyone on the planet. He argues that owing to our involuntary membership of this association, duties of justice exist not only between compatriots but between persons globally. In Moellendorf’s picture it is membership of this economic association, rather than citizenship of a state or membership of any other association, that makes us part of the global association and allots us global duties of justice. Box 4.9 Moellendorf’s claims About justice • Duties of justice are different from general moral duties. • Duties of justice are primarily institutional rather than between individuals. • Because duties of justice are institutional they are often fulfilled indirectly. • Duties of justice occur within associations. About global justice • For there to be global duties of justice there must be an appropriate global association. • The global economic order is such an association. • Accordingly there are global duties of justice. Moellendorf recognizes that the global association is not the only association within which we have duties of justice; we also have such duties to associations such as cities, provinces and states, and in fact are members of multiple sociopolitical associations. Moreover, these associations may not be prioritized in a simple manner; for example, if you live near a border you might have more in common with those who live near to you but on the other side of the border than to fellow nationals who live far away; similarly a farmer in Oklahoma may have more in common with a farmer in Italy than with a Wall Street financier. Given this, Moellendorf does not think duties of justice can be prioritized in a simple formula: for example, that you owe duties to compatriots before global duties. Priorities of duties of justice will change depending on EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 68 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. circumstance. Sometimes commitment to justice will require that non-compatriots will come first, and sometimes duties to compatriots will take precedence. For Moellendorf there is no general priority of one over the other. Rather, because we have various associations (one is global, another may be provincial, and so on), we also have various duties to justice, some of which may conflict. In cases of conflict – say, between the duties of justice we have to compatriots and duties to non-compatriots – the conflicting duties have to be weighed against each other. The important point here is that we do not begin to resolve such a conflict, nor see that justice is served, by simply declaring, in advance, that one association is the winner. Brock’s non-egalitarian cosmopolitanism We have seen some ways in which cosmopolitans develop Rawls’s theory of justice and argue that his two principles should apply directly at the global level. Another explicitly cosmopolitan view holds that all people have equal moral worth and makes use of Rawls’s methodology – the original position – while denying that this leads to the application of economic equality found in Rawls’s difference principle. Brock (2009) takes Rawls’s model and applies it to the global setting, where the parties in the global original position are seeking “a fair framework for interactions and relations among the world’s inhabitants”. Mirroring Rawls’s veil of ignorance, Brock’s parties know about the inequalities of poverty and affluence, health and security and so on, but are shielded from knowing their particular nationality or citizenship, and hence from predicting the situation of poverty or affluence, security, war or peace, health or illness they are likely to end up in. Brock claims that the parties here would not arrive at Rawls’s egalitarian principle, which, as we saw, states that any inequality is justified only if it is to the advantage of the least well off: the difference principle. They would, says Brock, select a less demanding principle that secures a minimum standard for a decent life and for the prospects of such a life, as well as certain basic freedoms. In other words, for Brock, taken globally, rational persons would choose a minimum standard of a decent life, without the clause that allows inequalities of opportunity only if they drag that minimum upwards. Brock cites empirical evidence for this conclusion from controlled experiments undertaken by Norman Frolich and Joe Oppenheimer, in which the overwhelming majority of subjects, under conditions modelled on the original position, chose her preferred principle over a difference principle. Brock defends her theoretical view that global justice is primarily about all people being afforded the chance of a decent life, where this means, basically, the opportunity to meet basic needs and to enjoy basic freedoms: for example, the basic needs of shelter, food, sanitation and protection from illness, basic education, and the freedom from violence and economic slavery. Brock states that enabling people to meet such needs and enjoy such freedoms, even minimally, requires “fair terms of cooperation”, and the social and political arrangements to underwrite these goods. Hence her starting-point is a set of universal entitlements that global political institutions should uphold, and in this sense her account is a thoroughgoing form of cosmopolitanism. Yet, in terms of its focus and structure – on basic human needs and freedoms and the political conditions that can enable these – it is important to see that this view, while committed to a standard of living below which no person should fall and holding to the cosmopolitan conception of the equal moral worth of people globally, is not primarily committed to making socioeconomic conditions equal. Hence, to a large extent, Brock’s account of global justice can be seen as non-egalitarian, even though she is expressly concerned with improving the plight of the world’s poor and implementing global justice. Where an egalitarian view holds that, as far as possible, the gap between rich and poor is closed, Brock is more concerned with raising the lower standard to a certain minimal “decent” level and less concerned with what happens above that level. So, if we were to imagine representatives of the world’s population positioned on a ladder, with the least well off at the bottom and the better off further up, Brock’s view is that many are now too low down and should be raised to a rung that represents at least a minimally decent life. Whether doing so, in fact, increases equality for all on the ladder is not, for her, the primary question of global justice. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 69 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. Pogge’s version of institutional cosmopolitanism As we have seen, cosmopolitans agree on the equal moral status of individuals globally, but they may disagree about what this entails regarding global socioeconomic equality: for instance, as Moellendorf suggested in his version of institutional cosmopolitanism, whether or not the “global association” is sufficient to require global duties. Pogge (2002), as Moellendorf suggested in his version of institutional cosmopolitanism, which he compares with interactional cosmopolitanism. An “interactional” view is concerned with individual duties; for instance, fulfilling human rights is a duty that individuals have to others directly. The scope of cosmopolitanism is “interactional” because it sees rights and duties – and their violations – in terms of interactions between persons. On the institutional view, the duty to uphold human rights is ascribed directly to institutional schemes rather than to individuals; again, like Moellendorf, for Pogge there is a distinction between the duties of individuals and institutions. In Pogge’s institutional form of cosmopolitanism, individuals do have obligations not to participate in unjust institutional schemes; therefore individual duties are entailed by this institutional approach. A good way to distinguish between the views is to consider Pogge’s example of how each would address the question of slavery. Taking the human right not to be enslaved, an interactional view would hold that by virtue of this right, all persons have a duty not to enslave each other, while the institutional view would oblige all legal and economic institutions not to recognize or allow practices in which persons are owned and used as slaves. In turn, individuals are obliged not to take part in or support institutions that facilitate slavery. For Pogge, an important difference between the interactional and the institutional view is what each says about people who are themselves neither slaves nor slaveholders. Someone taking the interactional view can hold that a “third party”, someone who as an individual does not enslave anyone, has no responsibility towards people who are enslaved: they are not in the relevant “interaction” with slaves to incur a duty. But on the institutional view, the right not to be enslaved obliges these persons not to uphold the institution of slavery or the institutional order that keeps it in place. Therefore, and importantly for global ethics, Pogge explicitly formulates the connection between individual and institutional duties. Generalizing from this example, Pogge (2002) is able to reject the arguments of rich and powerful people who, taking an interactional line, claim they have no obligation to the very poor in other countries because they are not directly involved in any violation of their rights. Pogge’s focus on the direct, “first-order” duties of global institutions of which rich people are part, rather than on the direct duties of interactions between persons, implies a “second-order” duty on anyone involved with such institutions. “Our negative duty [a duty not to do something; more on this in Chapter 5] not to cooperate in the imposition of unjust coercive institutions triggers obligations to protect their victims and promote feasible reforms that would enhance the fulfilment of their human rights.” We shall return to this in Chapter 7, and see how this view bears on the way we think about our obligations to the world’s poor. But, for now what is important to note is the way that thinkers such as Pogge and Moellendorf are developing cosmopolitanism, and that their focus on institutions makes it far less easy for individuals to claim that if they do not have direct relations with distant individuals then they have no duties to them. In the remainder of the chapter, we look at some alternative political theories to cosmopolitanism. Some of these can be regarded in some forms as weak versions of cosmopolitanism, or at least friendly to cosmopolitanism; other forms can be seen as being in opposition to cosmopolitanism. We shall also consider realism: an approach that directly opposes cosmopolitanism and denies its basic principles. CASE STUDY 4.2 The society-of-states approach and the sale of body parts If we return to the selling of body parts, we can see clearly the difference between a society-of-states approach and a cosmopolitan approach. In the domestic realm the reasoning of the two theorists might not be too different. Both would be concerned in the domestic sphere with the rights and wrongs of individuals’ actions and characters; so, depending on their ethical theory of choice, they would be considering best consequences, respect for persons and EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 70 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. human flourishing. Obviously there would be some difference in their reasoning; most importantly, the cosmopolitan will be factoring in concern for all global persons whereas the society-of-states theorist will be concerned only for those within the state. However, both will be concerned for individuals as the units of moral concern. For the cosmopolitan thinker this is still true in the international setting. The cosmopolitan theorist continues to employ the same moral framework globally as domestically; for them there is only one moral framework. Understanding the theoretical philosophical and political commitments of different factions helps one to understand how and why different policies and practices are endorsed by different groups and why. For the society-of-states theorist, as soon as one moves from the domestic realm to the international realm, the framework changes. The concern is no longer for individuals, but only for states. What is respected in this framework are things that are valuable to states, such as independence, sovereignty and non-interference. The moral concerns of the domestic realm are quite simply regarded as irrelevant to the international realm when it comes to relations between states. Therefore a society-of-states proponent will be concerned only about these state-centred issues and it is hard to imagine an instance in which principles of sovereignty or independence might be undermined by the sale of organs. If the trade in organs was so great that the health of the nation was undermined and thus its capability for independence and defence might be threatened, the society-of-states proponent might object to the sale of body parts. But, for the most part such ethical issues simply do not figure in the society-of-states schema. THE SOCIETY-OF-STATES APPROACH Rawls’s approach to global justice, which we looked at earlier in this chapter, can be thought of as an example of what others have developed as the “society-of-states” view. However, it is worth mentioning that Rawls himself does not use that term and we should resist casting Rawls as a simply society-of-states theorist, for reasons that should become apparent as we look more closely at this position as developed by more recent proponents, such as Terry Nardin (1983). The society-of-states approach argues that the international moral order is one that is made up of states and that states are the units of ethical consideration. Accordingly, states have moral duties to other states, not to individuals within those states. Moral duties that states are required to respect are those of non-intervention, sovereignty and independence. Thus the society-of-states approach regards the international sphere as a moral sphere with its own rules of good conduct. What counts as morally good or right in the international sphere is different from what is good or right in the domestic sphere. Therefore, although both the international and the domestic realm are governed by moral rules, they are governed by different moral rules. In the domestic realm the unit of concern is the individual, and moral issues concern what is right or wrong for individuals; in the global realm the unit of concern is the state and what is right or wrong for states. These are completely separate moral realms that respect quite different moral values. A key criticism of the society-of-states view – clearly illustrated by the case study – is that it simply ignores moral concerns in the global sphere. By switching frameworks from the domestic to the global it effectively sidesteps issues of duties to individuals. Is it really the case that states have nothing to say about how other states treat individuals within those states? While this may have historically been the reality of how states interacted, increasingly it seems unacceptable to consider it to be morally correct to have no concern for how those in other states are treated. This is seen increasingly in laws that stretch beyond borders; one example is laws about sex tourism. US citizens, for instance, can be prosecuted for sexual activity with prostitutes under the age of eighteen in other countries, even if that activity is legally permissible under the laws of that particular country. In addition, this approach conflicts with international conventions, such as the Geneva Conventions or the UDHR. In practice, the society-of-states approach still accounts for most dealings between states. For the most part, states do not intervene with how other states treat their citizens; however, this is not always the case, as we shall see in Chapter 6, where humanitarian intervention will be discussed. The international community is vocal in its criticism of perceived mistreatment of citizens of other states and perceived human-rights violations. For example, in Zimbabwe, leading members of the main opposition party – the Movement for Democratic Change – were intimidated, beaten and imprisoned prior to supposedly EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 71 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. “free” elections, adding to Zimbabwe’s profile as a “pariah state” on the international scene. Likewise Burma, a military dictatorship, regularly suppresses free speech and, according to Human Rights Watch, human trafficking and forced labour – including child labour – are commonplace. This is not simply ignored by the international community and Burma is currently subject to nineteen UN resolutions calling for democratization and human rights. As well as states taking stands on how other states treat their citizens, citizens also take stands across borders. Think, for instance, of consumer campaigns and boycotts of certain goods. Famous and successful boycotts of South African produce as well as sporting events were carried out against apartheid (in the 1970s and 1980s) and against specific companies who were implicated. In 2005, the food giant Nestlé was sued by the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund for using forced child labour, and the sports-clothing company Nike has come in for widespread public criticism for using cheap sweatshop labour in developing countries, for example in Naomi Klein’s book No Logo and Michael Moore’s documentary film The Big One. CASE STUDY 4.3 Nationalism and the sale of body parts For a nationalist, the political and the moral sphere are not completely separate, as they are for the society-of-states proponent, and thus moral considerations do count in international politics. But the moral obligations one has, or approaches one takes, to fellow nationals are different from those that one has to those beyond borders. Thus the nationalist may well have a different attitude regarding the treatment and remuneration of women who donate and sell their eggs to fellow nationals as compared to eggs being received from or donated to recipients in foreign jurisdictions. Some nationalists, such as Miller, whose argument we consider on page 92, claim that a special commitment to co-nationals is compatible with a commitment to universal human rights. Thus the question for a nationalist like Miller, who also endorses human rights, is twofold: (i) is the market in organs morally acceptable domestically; and (ii) if so does the international market in body parts breach human rights (or any other moral obligations beyond borders)? If it is both domestically morally acceptable and desired and it does not breach the less stringent global obligations, then the selling of body parts will be deemed ethical. What is crucial to note is that what is required to protect those beyond borders, in this instance compliance with human rights, is not equivalent to the duties and obligations owed within borders to fellow nationals. The globalization of our world suggests that a system that considers states as isolated and unconnected is increasingly unrealistic. Individuals travel between states, permanently or temporarily; also, many communities are global – for instance business communities, academic communities and activist communities – and, as discussed in Chapter 1, many of the most pressing ethical challenges are global in nature. Taken together these changes render the society-of-states picture increasingly out of date. This said, it is important to remember that in the political realm the state-centred view is still dominant. It is still governments of states, for the most part, who negotiate and implement international policy. These issues of governance structures will be returned to in Chapter 6. NATIONALISM A second alternative approach is nationalism. Nationalism does not refer in this context to nationalist political parties or extreme, usually right-wing, political sentiments, but rather to a moral and political claim that nations are ethically significant. Nationalists in this sense argue that what rights and duties we have to others is affected in part by nationality and that we have special obligations to fellow nationals (or compatriots) that we do not have to non-nationals. Those who defend the nationalist view argue that the claim that we have duties to our compatriots that we do not have to others is not strange, but in fact is assumed by most political actors and policy-makers, as well EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 72 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. as by the voting public in democracies. For example, health or education policy is determined in any country with regard to the needs and wishes of nationals, and it is nationals who will suffer or benefit from any change in policy. Indeed, if the voting public suddenly discovered that their taxes, which they believed were being used for national and local services, were found to have been used to benefit members of other countries, and at the expense of the home country, there would be an outcry. Thus such national parochialism is thought to be in line with common-sense morality and experience. But, nationalism denies a key assumption in the universalism that underpins the standard cosmopolitan view. That is, it explicitly denies that individuals are necessarily equal units of concern regardless of nationality. On the nationalist view, your compatriots take moral priority over non-compatriots, although this does not mean that a nationalist does not consider non-compatriots morally at all. The nationalist claim does not deny that there are some duties beyond national boundaries, but claims that there are special duties within national boundaries. For some, all such boundaries are states. However, this has been rejected on a number of grounds, and others argue that this is not the case because a state may cover more than one nation and those with a shared identity may be found in more than one state. In his book On Nationality (1995), Miller favours a cultural interpretation of national identity, such that recognizing nationality need not override other ways in which we define ourselves, such as ethnicity. Miller sees conceptions of nationality as significant for personal and communal self-understanding. He argues that cultural-national identities are legitimate sources of personal identity: the way we define ourselves as persons. Therefore he argues that nationality is something that distinguishes people and grounds their loyalties and interests. For Miller, this supports the view that prioritizing your nation is sometimes justifiable. Accordingly, we are justified in citing obligations to our co-nationals that have special, non-global status. He adds that nations are justified in seeking political self-determination: hence he is not merely describing the way in which nationality is significant, but saying also that this is a good thing. Proponents of nationalism argue that, based on a common history and a national character that feeds into cultural identity, there are special duties to fellow nationals that do not apply to non-nationals. The argument that persons have special duties to some people that they do not have to all is not a controversial one. For example, nearly all ethicists would accept that there are particular duties to family members, or to those with whom one has a personal relationship due to one’s roles (e.g. doctor to patient). However, those who distinguish between duties of justice and other duties would argue that these are not duties of justice, as discussed above. There are exceptions, for instance Singer (1972), who has argued that it makes no difference morally whether someone you are in a position to help is in front of you or on the other side of the world. We shall explore his view further in Chapter 7. But most ethicists do allow special relationships. Nationalists argue that just as there are special duties, for example, to family members, there are also special duties to your nation. Just as you can argue for cosmopolitanism using different moral theories, so too can you argue for nationalism using different moral theories; for example, on contractual grounds that nations are mutually beneficial societies, or according to utilitarian reasoning that such boundaries are useful ways of allocating more general duties (see Box 4.10). Box 4.10 Arguments from nationalists • There are certain special obligations to compatriots/co-nationals that do not necessarily extend to non-compatriots. • These special obligations do not preclude there also being some global obligations. • These special obligations, like other special obligations, are not strange but are morally justified. EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 73 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. POLITICAL REALISM The final position we shall consider is that of the political realist who takes a very anti-cosmopolitan stance and could perhaps be regarded as the “arch-enemy” of the cosmopolitan. The kind of political “realism” we shall be referring to is to be understood in something like the everyday sense of “being realistic” about the way things are and about what needs to be done. The term “realism” in philosophy can be used to describe the view that things, such as moral or aesthetic qualities, exist – are “real” – independently of our thoughts and perceptions of them. In what follows, when we mention “realism” we shall mean specifically political realism, and will not be talking about this sort of philosophical realism. The realist view of the ethics of international relations is perhaps the traditional view of international interaction. Philosophically it draws on Thomas Hobbes and his particular picture of the “state of nature”. Box 4.11 The Hobbesian state of nature In Hobbes’s words, in the states of nature there is: “no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (1994: 76) The British philosopher Hobbes argued that morality derives from the rules that are necessary when human beings live together in social groups. This is a “contract” theory of morality, sometimes called “social-contract theory” or “contractarianism”: social rules and the mechanisms for enforcing them are agreed (contracted) by human beings as they move into social arrangements. For Hobbes, people “before” or “outside” the “social contract” are in a “state of nature”. This is summed up in his now famous description of life in the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. The state of nature, on Hobbes’s view, is essentially a “constant state of war”, without any association between individuals, and therefore without the cooperative endeavours that are necessary for improving life. The Hobbesian state of nature is a very unattractive and undesirable picture of human life. In Hobbes’s model, in order to escape the state of nature, human beings begin to cooperate with each other, realizing that together it is easier to meet basic human needs and to improve chances of survival. In order for such cooperation to take place, agreement is necessary to ensure that people will not be harmed and to ensure that agreements will be kept. This agreement Hobbes terms “the social contract” and it is from this that moral codes are derived. Morality, then, is not an essential or intrinsic part of human being or relationships (indeed, in the state of nature even relationships are not essential to human beings – something that contradicts the universal need for some nurturing, parenting relationship for survival). Rather, morality is a cooperative scheme: a set of social practices and conventions that works if the majority of persons whom it affects participate in it. Individuals choose to cooperate from self-interested motives. Such a scheme is set in place by rules agreed on by people who, as rational beings, seek the mutual benefits of such a scheme. Realists argue that this state of nature is the condition of the international order and therefore no rules of morality apply (or should apply) in this arena. They argue, following Hobbes, that the social contract requires the assurance that everyone will comply with the rules if rational people are to agree to abide by it. Hobbes argues that this requires that there is a government or power that is able to ensure that people comply and, if EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 74 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. there is not, then it is not in individuals’ self-interest to comply with the social contract. In the arena of international relations there is no such powerful governing body or authority and thus no contract and no moral obligations. So war would seem to be an unavoidable state. Certainly this is what Hobbes thought. In the international context the state of nature describes the situation between states. Accordingly, every state (just like every individual in the original state of nature) is entitled to seek its own self-interest. Not only are there no moral rules in the international realm but because there are no moral rules what a state should do is to seek its own interest. Thus for the realist a state should always do what is in the national interest. CASE STUDY 4.4 Realism and the sale of body parts If we consider how realists would approach our case study about the selling of eggs and kidneys, the simple answer is that they would not. Realists might well deem the market in body parts simply not their concern, but a moral matter to be addressed in the moral sphere, not a political matter to be addressed in the political sphere. It is possible that realists might deem the matter their concern if they deemed some aspects of the case political, although again they would address these purely as political matters, matters of power, rather than as moral matters. For example, it is possible to imagine that a relatively poor country might regard the purchasing of organs from its citizens as a practice that weakened the country politically – against the national interest – and thus move to stop the practice. Likewise one could imagine a country worrying about an influx of “donors” on “paid holidays” as a gateway to illegal immigration, or conversely a country might wish to encourage the practice in order to address the scarcity of organs. However, such actions, and the many other possible reasons one could imagine, would always be for political reasons – actions taken because they were believed to be in the national interest – with no regard for any other issue, and certainly not moral issues. For realists, moral concerns about the sale of body parts are, like all other moral concerns, quite simply not their concern. Box 4.12 The realist’s arguments • Morality is a set of rules that rational people agree to for their mutual benefit. • Others must also comply for it to be in an individual’s self-interest to comply. • Some authority or government is necessary to ensure compliance. • In the international arena there is no such authority. • Therefore it is not rational for states to comply with moral rules because they have no guarantee that others do. • Therefore there is no morality (moral rules) in the international arena. For the realist, morality simply does not exist in the international sphere. Hans Morgenthau, a predominant proponent of this position in the twentieth century, asserts the non-moral nature of political realism in his book Politics Among Nations (1948; Morgenthau & Thompson 1985). He emphasizes the independence of the political realm, stating that the political sphere is “autonomous”, and not one to which the standards or methods of interpersonal morality apply. He argues that morality may itself be highly relevant in many areas of life, but it has no place in thinking about the political affairs of states or in international politics. In his words, “while the individual has a moral right to sacrifice himself in defence of such a moral principle, the state has no right to let its moral disapprobation of the infringement of (that moral principle) get in the way of successful political action, itself inspired by the moral principle of national survival”. International politics and relations are concerned with the interests of states understood in terms of their powers. To impose another framework is to import inappropriate standards to the realm of the political. International relations is a sphere in which morality is simply not relevant. For a realist, then, the only EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 75 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. concern when it comes to addressing ethical dilemmas is what is in the national interest; and national interest is interpreted in political terms of power. The realist sees nations much as Hobbes saw individuals in his pre-societal “state of nature”. Here it is important to consider that to be a political realist is not necessarily to be anti-moral or an amoralist. On the realist view, the global order just is not a subject to which a moral order is relevant, because the arrangements of nations in the world (at least as things stand) preclude there being a moral community. CONCLUSION This chapter has introduced the key theories of political philosophy and understandings of global justice. When these political theories are added to the moral theories of the last chapter the basic ethical toolbox for global ethics is in place. To this will be added rights theories (in Chapter 5) and a more detailed understanding of the nature of global governance and global institutions (in Chapter 6). Indeed, we have already begun to raise some of the issues that will be explored in later chapters. The introduction of institutional cosmopolitanism in this chapter shows that considering the global structure and institutions is not just a matter of empirical knowledge, but also has moral implications. For instance, is the global economic order sufficient to constitute an association? If so, what is its mechanism? Do institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) constitute governance of this association? Alternatively, do we need to move to other forms of institution and even to a world government if duties of justice are to be adequately fulfilled? When you approach pressing contemporary ethical dilemmas you should apply the tools you have learnt to use. As we have seen, the political theory you endorse does not automatically provide you with the answer to prescribing what ethically should happen. However, if you combine political and moral commitments then you begin to get some answers. Which moral and political theories do you endorse? What conclusions do you actually come to? Although this chapter has not given simple answers to what a global ethicist should endorse, it has shown us the scope of global ethics. For instance, a global ethicist clearly cannot be realist: a realist denies the global scope of morality. Conversely, it makes a lot of sense for a global ethicist to endorse a cosmopolitan position of one form or another. Yet, to say this does not end the debate. Which form should be adopted? Institutional cosmopolitanism? Do you agree with Moellendorf that global justice depends on associations rather than individuals? Do you wish to adopt a strong or weak form? Are duties to all individuals the same, or is it acceptable to have some duties to compatriots only? If so, how are these balanced? How you answer these questions will determine how you do global ethics and what kind of global ethicist you are, indeed, whether you think that there are in fact global-ethics issues at all. For instance, if you are a realist this debate is completely irrelevant. This said, those who adopt society-of-states approaches and nationalist approaches still have much to offer the global-ethics debate. How much depends on how much weight they give to global duties. For instance, the society-of-states advocates might still wish to endorse human rights (or another global set of obligations): how is this to be done? Likewise, the nationalists might in fact endorse substantial global obligations, even if these are not as high as the duties owed to compatriots. Thus there is much still to be determined, and it mostly depends on which arguments you are convinced by. Chapter 5 will help in making such judgements. It considers human rights as a possible “global ethic”, as well as suggestions of basic rights and minimal standards. This debate will add to the ethical toolbox and help you decide what you think is actually right or wrong; it will give you the tools to make arguments in support of your position. FURTHER READING • Beitz, C. Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 11/7/2017 4:29 PM via JOHNSON & WALES UNIV AN: 924382 ; Widdows, Heather.; Global Ethics : An Introduction Account: s9006562 76 Copyright © 2014. Routledge. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law. • Brock, G. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). • Brock, G. & H. Brighouse. The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). • Caney, S. Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). • Mandle, J. Global Justice: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006). • Moellendorf, D. Cosmopolitan Justice (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2002). • Pogge, T. “Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty”. Ethics 103 (1992): 48–75. • Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice (rev. edn) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). • Van Hooft, S. Cosmopolitanism: A Philosophy for Global Ethics (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2009). 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Running head: SLUMMING IT

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Slumming It
Name
Institutional Affiliation

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SLUMMING IT
Slumming It
Introduction
The movie Slumming It by Kevin McCloud explores the urban environment of Dharavi in
Mumbai. The main issue of interest is the claim that Dharavi possibly has the answers to many of
the significant problems facing cities in developed countries. The documentary reveals Kevin’s
discovery of Dharavi as well as the journey he takes through the recycling industry of
Dharavi.Through the findings made, Dharavi reveals itself as a solution to many of the first
world problems through its unique organization.
Analysis
It is also essential to understand Nozick's theory and its connection to the documentary.
Nozick describes the entitlement theory and the various principles that surround it.The principle
of justice in acquisition is concerned with the acquisition of holdings, and it explains how
individuals own common property as well as what things would occur in such a situation.
Another principle is that of justice in transfer, and it is concerned with how individuals would
recei...


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