Respecting foreign peoples: the limits of moral obligations

Abstract

Recent history clearly confirms John Rawls’ claim that peoples’ fundamental interest in self-respect makes them insist on ‘receiving from other peoples a proper respect and recognition of their equality’. Even before the US president Barack Obama promised numerous nations new relationships based ‘on mutual respect’, many foreign leaders had already begun to insist on being ‘duly respected’ by the United States and other (mostly Western) countries. What is unclear, however, is how far such moral claims actually extend, especially as far as peoples’ ‘trials during their history and … their culture with its accomplishments’ (Rawls) are concerned. When can peoples justifiably complain about ‘inadequate respect’? When does international morality, understood as practical reasoning in the Kantian tradition, command a change in foreign attitudes and behaviour? This article focuses on the range of universal norms that should regulate the allocation of esteem and attention in an increasingly integrated world. It shows that cultural diversity among peoples all but excludes substantive criteria for specifying ‘due respect’, thus leaving mostly formal criteria, such as consistency and reciprocity, for identifying uncontroversial cases of disrespect.