Cosmopolitan Idea of Global Distributive Justice

Abstract

The problem of how justice should be considered at the global level has provoked one of the most controversial discussions in contemporary political and moral philosophy. An aim of these polemics has been to find an adequate answer to the question of whether global distributive justice should be understood as social justice in the sense that the principles of justice, accepted at the national level, should be extended to all mankind or, just the opposite, if global justice should be understood as an international justice, which requires the development of the principles that would enable fair interactions between nations and countries, which should be quite different from those principles that allow interindividual equity within nations or nation states. The chapter briefly discusses the reasons why philosophers like Beitz and Pogge are convinced that the principles of justice, accepted at the national level, should also apply to the world as a whole and, on the other hand, why Rawls, Nagel, and some others think just the opposite. I argue that, from the cosmopolitan point of view, principles of global distributive justice should apply equally and impartially to all human beings (Kok-Chor Tan) as citizens of the world and that commitment to cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice does not entail commitment to a world state (O’Neill, O. (2008). Rights, obligations and world hunger. In T. Pogge & K. Horton (Eds.), Global ethics, St. Paul: Paragon House, 139–155).