Global justice: Shaped rather than found

Abstract

This article argues that global egalitarian accounts of global justice are insufficient and inappropriate to the task of thinking globally about justice. This article argues that the most pervasive approaches to cosmopolitanism, and in particular global egalitarian accounts, are of limited utility because they assume the existence of suitable preconditions which are absent, in particular the lack of a global reflective equilibrium. In so doing, they ignore the requisite precondition for their own thought to be either persuasive or possible as a basis for genuine conduct or institutional reform. This article argues that the task for cosmopolitan thought is to think about how cosmopolitanism can in the words of Richard Rorty be ‘shaped rather than found’ and what that would mean for how we construct accounts of global justice and other pressing cosmopolitan issues. It concludes that developing a theory of global justice requires at least a theoretical engagement with non-Western political thought.