Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism Social Justice, Voluntarism, and Liberal Nationalism

Abstract

Contemporary political philosophy in the broadly liberal tradition primarily concerns social justice: the distribution of benefits and burdens among the members of a society. There are many ways in which social justice may be said to be central to thinking about justice. This chapter examines two attempts to vindicate the belief that we have special obligations to the members of our societies. It discusses the significant difficulties, largely due to the fact that their strongest replies to the cosmopolitan critic require significant concessions to the particularist critic. The chapter begins with attempts to show that social obligations are voluntary obligations. There are several voluntarist positions in political philosophy. Neither social voluntarism nor liberal nationalism provides a satisfactory defense of the priority of social justice. Keywords:liberal nationalism; particularist critic; social justice; social obligations; voluntarism