by Phil Parvin
Particularists tend to see the search for universal principles of justice and morality as politically mistaken, as doing so represents little more than the desire of one group to impose its values on another, and philosophically mistaken, in the sense that community membership determines the way in which we think about and discuss morality. Not everyone reasons about morality and politics in the same way: when thinking about morality we reach for concepts and vocabularies which make sense to us, but which might not make sense to others. Liberals frame their claims in terms of things like rights and individuality and rationality, while others might appeal to things like humility or hierarchy. Or, many people might appeal to notions like ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ but have entirely different understandings of these ideas.
So particularists are sympathetic to sovereignty as the result of fundamental claims about the nature of morality rather than simply for political expediency. They defend a global politics in which different nation-states are allowed to act in accordance with their own moral values.
COSMOPOLITANISM
Cosmopolitans, on the other hand, argue that universal standards of morality and justice are possible and necessary. They reject the particularist story about the origins of morality, and replace it with their own. For cosmopolitans morality does not originate in community values but in universal, claims about the ways in which individuals should be treated. Cosmopolitan liberals argue that the authority of normative statements comes not from an appeal to particular traditions or shared values, but from the fact that they can be accepted as reasonable by people who have different values and traditions. Hence, when thinking about global justice, we must put aside our national membership, and seek what is right for all people, rather than what is merely right for our nation.
Some liberal cosmopolitans, such as Charles Beitz (1979) and Thomas Pogge (2008), argue that Rawls’s theory should be applied globally. They argue that our national identity should be put behind the Rawlsian veil of ignorance. Just as deliberators in the original position do not know what religious, ethnic or cultural group they belonged to, so they should not know their national group. So parties in the original position would agree upon a set of principles which have global scope. Rawls thus provides liberal cosmopolitans with a tool for criticizing the actions of unjust states, although Rawls himself does not develop his theory in this way (Rawls 1999).
Cosmopolitans uphold the universalist liberal idea embodied in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: it is the wellbeing of individual human beings, not nations, that matters. State violations of freedom and equality are therefore unjust and should not be permitted in the name of national values or state sovereignty. They are unjust because, in Rawlsian terms, they would not be the subject of agreement in the original position and, as such, they would be rejected as principles by which the global order might be arranged.
Case study: Two varieties of cosmopolitanism
Peter Singer’s utilitarian cosmopolitanism
Peter Singer is a utilitarian, and so his approach to global poverty is grounded in consequentialist moral theory. He focuses on the moral duties of individuals rather than states. In his article ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’ (Singer 1972), Singer asks: What should we think about the fact that so many people in the world suffer the effects of devastating poverty? Singer’s answer is radical, but grounded in two intuitively uncontroversial claims: that (a) ‘suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad’, and that (b) ‘if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it’ (Singer 1972). Singer argues that if we accept these claims, which we should, then we must radically rethink our attitudes toward the plight of needy individuals. For, he says, it requires that we will need to give a far larger proportion of our money to charity than we currently do: in fact we will need to give all the money that we would otherwise spend on things which are less morally important than reducing global poverty.
This effectively means that we must donate our entire disposable income to the global poor. If, having provided for your basic needs, you have £10 to spare, you are morally required to give it to people elsewhere who are in poverty (through charitable donations, for example) rather than spend it on something that you would enjoy. Similarly, if you have £30, or £300, or £3000 left over, you ought morally to donate this money to people who are suffering the effects of poverty, rather than spend it on yourself. Singer argues that if we are in a position to prevent one or more people somewhere suffering the effects of poverty, then we are acting immorally whenever we choose not to do so in favour of buying something nice for ourselves like a meal out or an iPad or a new car. Singer’s conclusion is that accepting the two claims with which he begins means that we are morally required to give away as much of our wealth as is compatible with us not suffering the effects of poverty ourselves.
Thomas Pogge’s liberal cosmopolitanism
Thomas Pogge is a liberal who draws upon Rawls’s work to inform a universal cosmopolitan conception of global justice (Pogge 2008).
Pogge argues that the unequal distribution of wealth and resources among states in the world today results from treaties, conventions and institutional structures created and strengthened by rich states. These rich states could reform these conventions and institutions so as to alleviate the inequalities which result in so many people living in poverty. The fact that they are not doing so is immoral. Rich states are not passive bystanders: they have used their power to secure their own national self-interests at the expense of other, less powerful states. Given this, rich states ought morally to take steps to rectify the disadvantage experienced by people living in poor states by working together to (a) reform global and international institutions and (b) contribute a proportion of their wealth to a common fund which would be used to eradicate poverty. In particular, Pogge challenges the common claim that the eradication of poverty would be too expensive. He does so by proposing that nations pay a tax on the resources they use or sell (what he calls the ‘Global Resources Dividend’). Pogge estimates that a dividend of only 1 per cent would raise around $300 billion a year, equivalent to $250 per person in the world’s poorest quintile.
‘Three facts make the great ongoing catastrophe of human poverty deeply problematic, morally. First, it occurs in the context of unprecedented global affluence that is easily sufficient to eradicate all life-threatening poverty… Second… global inequalities… are increasing relentlessly… Third, conditions of life anywhere on earth are today deeply affected by international interactions of many kinds and thus by the elaborate regime of treaties and conventions that profoundly and increasingly shape such interactions. Those who participate in this regime, especially in its design or imposition, are morally implicated in any contribution to ever-increasing global economic inequality and to the consequent persistence of severe poverty.’
Thomas Pogge, Politics as Usual: What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), pp. 12–13.
Global poverty: humanitarianism vs. global coercive redistribution
How do particularists and cosmopolitans respond to the radical inequalities in resources, wealth and opportunities which exist between nation-states in the world today? Do rich states have a moral obligation to redistribute wealth to poorer states? More specifically, do rich individuals living in rich states have an obligation to give a proportion of their wealth to poor individuals living in poor states?
Currently, the global distribution of resources results from exchanges among individuals and organizations (either through global markets or private philanthropy) or states (through humanitarian aid). The humanitarian model operates a bit like a global form of libertarianism among states: states are considered the owners of resources which they can use as they please. Any attempt to tell states what to do with their own resources is a violation of their sovereignty and a constraint on t
heir freedom and is, therefore, unjust. Hence, it is largely up to states whether they choose to distribute any of their resources to poorer states. Sovereign states, like Nozickean individuals, work out for themselves whether they can afford to give charity and are free to set the terms of their aid.
This humanitarian model is consistent with particularism and the idea of sovereignty, but has been widely criticized for the same reasons that Nozick’s libertarianism has been criticized. It leaves the poor subject to the whims of the rich and fails to take seriously the needs of people living in poverty; it assumes that states are entitled to the resources that they currently hold (even the natural ones which they were lucky enough to find within their territory); and it means that states can, if they wish, give nothing at all without moral reproach.
Furthermore, the humanitarian model strengthens power imbalances between rich and poor states by allowing rich states to place conditions on their aid. For example, recipient states are often required to pay substantial interest on loans that they are offered, and aid money from organizations like the IMF and the World Bank is often conditional upon recipient states introducing free market reforms. Often, poor states are forced to choose between accepting these conditions or losing the much-needed aid entirely.
In applying Rawlsian liberalism at a global level, cosmopolitan liberals like Thomas Pogge, Charles Beitz and Brian Barry offer a much more radical approach. Placing national identity behind the veil of ignorance has profound implications for international justice and the relations between states: it means that Rawls’s two principles of justice are applicable at a global level. States are not simply left to decide for themselves how many of their resources they will give to poorer states, rather they must redistribute their resources in accordance with the two principles of justice. Just as individuals in a Rawlsian scheme are not entitled to benefit from talents that they acquired by luck, so states are not entitled to benefit from the natural resources that they were lucky enough to discover on the land they happen to inhabit. Conversely, states that do not happen to possess valuable national resources should not suffer unfair hardships.
So cosmopolitanism rejects the voluntaristic basis for the humanitarian model, and rejects the claim that international obligations of justice cannot exist. Instead it argues for the establishment of a global system of redistribution whereby rich states redistribute resources according to something like a global difference principle. As such, cosmopolitanism rejects the idea that states should have sovereignty over matters of international justice and calls instead for states to be forced to comply with the principles of justice that would be agreed upon in a global original position. Principles of justice act as constraints upon the pursuit of self-interested ends by states at the global level just as they act as constraints upon the pursuit of self-interested ends by individuals at the domestic level. In the realm of economic redistribution, their relations with other states, and their treatment of their citizens, then, states in a cosmopolitan system would be required to constrain their actions in accordance with liberal principles, and to respect the freedom and equality of all individuals.
Conclusion
There is, of course, a lot more to be said on this issue. Not all liberals are cosmopolitans, for example. And not all cosmopolitans are liberals (some, like Peter Singer, are utilitarians). And not all cosmopolitan liberals commit to Rawls’s difference principle. Indeed, although many cosmopolitans use Rawls’s work to justify global principles of justice, Rawls himself rejected cosmopolitanism!
Nonetheless, we hope to have done enough here to reveal some of the complexities, and the importance, of the debate concerning the relations between states. These debates between universalist cosmopolitans and particularists are of profound importance. They matter philosophically, and the political implications of the debate affect each and every person on the planet.
Key ideas
Cosmopolitanism: The normative position, held by many universalist liberals and utilitarians, that individual human beings are the basic subjects of philosophical reflection on questions of global justice, and that the wellbeing of individuals cannot be trumped by the wellbeing of groups, communities or nations.
Globalization: The claim that people and countries of the world are becoming increasingly connected and interdependent.
Particularism: The idea, associated with a communitarian conception of identity and politics, that moral rules originate in the shared values of the community and that, therefore, no universal standards of morality are possible.
Sovereignty: The idea, embodied in current international law and politics, that nation-states should, as far as possible, be left alone to manage their own internal affairs free from external interference.
Universalism: The idea that moral statements hold true for all people, and not just for members of particular communities.
Dig deeper
Brian Barry, ‘Statism and Nationalism: A Cosmopolitan Critique’, in Ian Shapiro and Lea Brilmeyer (eds), Global Justice (New York: New York University Press, 1999).
Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).
David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
Thomas Pogge, Politics as Usual: What Lies Behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric (Cambridge: Polity, 2010).
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
Joseph Raz and Avishai Margalit, ‘National Self-Determination’, Ethics in the Public Domain: Essays in the Morality of Law and Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 125–145.
Peter Singer, ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972), pp. 229–43.
Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Kok Chor-Tan, Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
Fact-check
1 What is statism?
A The claim that global politics is static
B The claim that states have a duty to bring about global justice
C The claim that states should have sovereignty
D The claim that states are increasingly interdependent
2 What is cosmopolitanism?
A The claim that global politics is static
B The claim that states have a duty to bring about global justice
C The claim that states should have sovereignty
D The claim that states are increasingly interdependent
3 What is globalization?
A The claim that global politics is static
B The claim that states have a duty to bring about global justice
C The claim that states should have sovereignty
D The claim that states are increasingly interdependent
4 What is particularism?
A The claim that moral principles are particular in scope
B The claim that moral principles are not particular in scope
C The claim that moral principles are particularly important
D The claim that moral principles are not particularly important
5 What is universalism?
A The claim that statism is universal
B The claim that all states should have equal rights
C The claim that all people should have equal rights
D The claim that globalization is universal
6 Which of the following best describes the existing international order?
A Statist
B Universalist
C Cosmopolitan
D All of the above
7 Which of the following are not compatible with cosmopolitanism?
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A Globalization
B Universalism
C Global redistribution
D Statism
8 What is state sovereignty?
A The idea that states should have monarchs
B The idea that states should be left to themselves
C The idea that states should be democratic
D The idea that states should help the global poor
9 Which of the following defends the most extensive duties to help the global poor?
A Peter Singer
B David Miller
C Thomas Pogge
D Robert Nozick
10 Which of the following argues for a global difference principle?
A John Rawls
B Peter Singer
C Charles Beitz
D Robert Nozick
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Intergenerational justice
As concerns about the environment continue to grow among scientists, activists and politicians, political philosophers have increasingly asked questions about the kind of obligations of justice which may or may not exist between generations. Do we have moral obligations to future generations? Do currently living people have obligations toward people who do not yet exist? If so, what kind of obligations could these possibly be?