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UNIT I:

-----INTRODUCTION---MEANING AND
CONCEPT OF GLOBAL JUSTICE
THEORETICAL PREPOSITIONS OF GLOBAL JUSTICE
REALISM
PARTICULARISM
NATIONALISM
COSMOPOLITANISM

MEANING & SIGNIFICANCE OF GLOBALIZATION


The
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term Globalization is wide than the wider; therefore,


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and brief versions of authentic sources in coming

The word Origin and History for globalization Expand1961, from


globalize, which is attested at least from 1953 in various senses;
the main modern one, with reference to global economic systems,
emerged 1959.

What is Globalization?
Meaning, Definition & Description-;
1- The tendency of investment funds and businesses to move beyond
Domestic and national markets to other markets around the globe, thereby
increasing the interconnectedness of different markets. Globalization has

had the effect of markedly increasing not only international trade, but also
cultural exchange.
THE INVESTOPEDIA

2- Globalization is the tendency of businesses, technologies, or


Philosophies to spread throughout the world, or the process of making this
happen. The global economy is sometimes referred to as a globality,
characterized as a totally interconnected marketplace, unhampered by time
zones or national boundaries. The proliferation of McDonalds restaurants
around the world is an example of globalization; the fact that they adapt their
menus to suit local tastes is an example of glocalization (also known as
internationalization), a combination of globalization and localization.
Margaret Rouse
Editorial Director
The Globalization

SIGNIFICANCE
Globalization - something only of concern for international business, trade,
diplomacy? Or, something that affects all of us, no matter what our profession or
interest?
Several months ago, the Wilder Board asked: "What large scale trends or issues
exist, which could have very profound consequences for the work of nonprofit
organizations, whether local, national, or international?" This Board has always
looked ahead strategically; they knew that plans within Wilder take into
consideration changes in the population, the rising and falling of specific needs,
and so on. In this case, however, they wanted to look beyond the obvious, to larger
trends or overarching conditions that might produce the more visible trends that we
readily see and understand.
Among several nominations of significant, large-scale trends, globalization
percolated to the top as an important focus of attention, and we spent time
discussing it. So, in a series of blogs, I'll offer my views on what globalization
means and what implications it has for us.

One, simple definition of globalization: the increasing integration of societies and


economies throughout the world. It means that people move more and more easily
across borders, that more money and capital moves across borders, and that freer
trade exists.

The International Monetary Fund defined "economic globalization" as: "a historical
process, the result of human and technological progress. It refers to the increasing
integration of economies around the world, particularly through trade and financial
flows. The term also refers to the movement of people (labor) and knowledge
(technology) across international borders."
Thomas Friedman (author of "The World is Flat", "The Lexus and the Olive Tree")
asserts that "Globalization has replaced the Cold War as the defining international
system." A recent headline in the New York Times strikingly confirmed this
assertion. If you remember the 1950s and 1960s, your recollections of the Soviet
Union probably include: Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on a podium; the
phrase (probably mis-translated) "we will bury you"; the Iron Curtain; the "red
menace"; and similar negative concepts. At that time, public service
announcements attempted to reassure us by explaining that the "DEW line" would
detect the launch of Soviet missiles; it seemed that the U.S. and the Soviet Union
had missiles pointed at one another, ready for launch. Now, a half century later, the
New York Times of April 21 stated: "Pentagon invites Kremlin to link missile
systems."
Friedman asserts something else that can help us to understand the importance of
globalization for all of us. As the Friedman web site states: "Globalization is the
integration of capital, technology, and information across national borders, in a way
that is creating a single global market and, to some degree, a global village." In
The Lexus and the Olive Tree, he frames "the tension between the globalization
system and ancient forces of culture, geography, tradition, and community."
Jim Steiner, of Lowry Hill and a member of the Wilder Board illustrated how capital
flows in today's world and offered examples of how local decision-making is
unbounded; companies look to achieve the best possible gains within an
international network.
It's this blending of the local and global, this creation of the truly global village, that
we need to pay attention to. Whether we realize it or not, the forces of globalization
affect our personal, civic, and business lives. Decisions we make as voters,
investors, leaders, and community members can leverage the forces of
globalization, or can passively react to those forces. "Neighborhood" decisionmaking and "world-wide" decision making overlap more than ever before.
Globalization has, on the one hand, increased opportunities; it has democratized
communication and the way we learn about the world. However, not everyone has
received benefits. Globalization has enhanced the situations of many of us, yet
some of us may be much worse off as a result of globalization.

CONCEPT OF GLOBAL JUSTICE


INTRODUCTION:
If you do a literature search on global justice you will find that this is a newly
prominent expression there are more books and essays on it in this millennium
already than in the preceding one, at least as far as computers can tell. Of course,
some of the broad topics currently debated under the heading of global justice
have been discussed for centuries, back to the beginnings of civilization. But they
were discussed under different labels, such as international justice, international
ethics, and the law of nations. And this shift in terminology is quite significant
or so I believe. Obviously, different users of a new expression may have diverse
motives and ideas, some of which I may not be familiar with. Thus I must confess
to never having read the book published already in 1977 entitled No More
Plastic Jesus: Global Justice and Christian Lifestyle. As fellow-philosopher Clint
Eastwood pronounced so memorably: A mans got to know his limitations. So I
wont pretend to speak for everyone, but will rather say a little about the evolving
ideas that motivated me to use the expression global justice in the titles of my
doctoral dissertation, of my first essay in Philosophy & Public Affairs, and of six
subsequent publications.
We can begin with two distinctions. The first is between two different ways of
looking at the events of our social world. On the one hand, we can see such
events interactionally: as actions, and effects of actions performed by individual
and collective agents. On the other hand, we can see them institutionally: as
effects of how our social world is structured of our laws and conventions,
practices and social institutions. These two ways of viewing entail different
descriptions and explanations of social phenomena, and they also lead to two
different kinds of moral analysis or moral diagnostics.

BRIEF ABOUT THE SUBJECT


Contemplating justice on a global scale in today's world can easily be seen as an
almost impossible,
Don Quixotic venture.
When Thomas Hobbes devoted De Cive to exploring the rights of the state and the
duties of its subjects, he set the stage for the next three and a half centuries of
political philosophy. Focusing on the confrontation between individual and state
meant to focus on a persons relationship not to particular rulers, but to an

enduring institution that made exclusive claims to the exercise of certain powers
within a domain. Almost two centuries after Hobbes, Hegel took it for granted that
political theory was merely an effort to comprehend the state as an inherently
rational entity. And 150 years later, American philosopher Robert Nozick could
write that the fundamental question of political philosophy is whether there should
be any state at all
Two central philosophical questions arise about the state: whether its existence
can be justified to its citizens to begin with; and what is a just distribution of goods
within it. As far as the first question is concerned, philosophers from Hobbes
onwards have focused on rebutting the philosophical anarchist, who rejects the
concentrated power of the state as illegitimate. For both sides of the debate,
however, the presumption has been that those to whom state power had to be
justified were those living within its frontiers. The question of justice too has been
much on the agenda since Hobbes, but it gained centrality in the last 50 years, due
in part to the rejuvenating effect of John Rawls
1971 Theory of Justice. Again the focus was domestic, at least initially.
However, real world changes, grouped together under the label globalization,
have in recent decades forced philosophers to broaden their focus. In a world in
which goods and people cross borders routinely, philosophers have had to
consider whether the existence of state power can be justified not just to people
living within a given state, but Important preliminaries arise and need to be
clarified: What justice: political, cultural, religious, or socio-economic justice?
What goals can or should global justice serve? Justice as (Hobbesean)
peace, justice as doing no harm,1 justice as equality, justice as reward, justice as
welfare (social justice), justice as righteousness (religious-mystical justice), justice
as individual agency, utilitarianism justice supplementary to private ethics-to
mention but a few.
Justice for whom: for individuals, natural persons, legal entities, corporations,
communities, groups, nations, states, all sentient beings, the environment, the
planet, the universe, God?
The issue of global justice promises nothing but an enormous scope of inquiry.
This modest effort to offer some reflections on this issue will limit itself to an
engagement with the obvious and the urgent.
also to people excluded by it (for example, by border controls). At a time when
states share the world stage with a network of treaties and global institutions,
philosophers have had to consider not just whether the state can be justified to
those living under it, but whether the whole global order of multiple states and
global institutions can be justified to those living under it. And in a world in which
the most salient inequalities are not within states, but among them, philosophers
have had to broaden their focus for justice too, asking not only what counts as a
just distribution within the state, but also what counts as a just distribution globally.

THEORETICAL
JUSTICE

PREPOSITIONS

OF

GLOBAL

Valentinis account of global justice comprises two elements: First, a general theory
or framework of justice, coercion and freedom; and second, the application of that
theory to questions of global justice. Valentini argues that the function of justice is
to morally assess instances of coercion; she believes that coercion should be
understood more expansively than it hitherto has been, and she advances a
conception of freedom as independence that draws on elements from both liberal
and republican traditions. According to Valentini, thinking about the requirements
of global justice within this coercion framework delivers a picture that is distinct
from familiar versions of cosmopolitanism and statism, while preserving important
insights from both.
Valentini takes the liberal idea that the function of justice is to assess coercion as
her starting point, but argues that our understanding of what phenomena are to
count as coercive hence as giving rise to concerns of justice needs to be
widened. Coercion should be understood as encompassing all constraints on
individual freedom that stand in need of special justification. We should speak of
interactional coercion (p. 130) whenever one agent, whether an individual or a
group, avoidably and foreseeably places a non-trivial constraint on the freedom of
some other agent. And we should speak of systemic coercion
whenever a system of rules, i.e., the rule-governed behavior of individual or group
agents, has the foreseeable and avoidable effect of constraining individual
freedom. According to Valentinis preferred understanding of freedom, an agents
freedom may be constrained by either reducing the number or quality of options
available to that agent, or by reducing the robustness of their options, i.e., by
increasing the extent to which the availability of the options depends on the
behavior of some other agent. How does this normative framework apply to
questions of global justice? Three implications are particularly important. Firstly,
because requirements of justice arise out of a concern for justifying coercion, the
content of duties of global justice will depend on how actors in the international
arena constrain each others freedom. In a world of self-contained states, noninterference would be the only requirement of global justice, whereas in a fully
integrated world, the coercion framework would deliver cosmopolitan conclusions.
Secondly, because a network of different relationships of coercion characterizes
the international order in its current form, different principles of justice hold
between different actors. On the level of interactional coercion between states, for
example, states should respect each other as the primary protectors of their
citizens individual freedom, giving rise to duties of non-interference and a concern
for protecting the conditions of effective state sovereignty.8 On the level of global
systemic coercion, comprising the rules and conventions governing finance and
trade, adverse impacts on individual freedom, for example through trade

liberalization or financial crises, ought to be minimized, say through enhanced


global regulation and fairer bargaining mechanisms within the WTO. And finally,
because individuals are responsible for various types of coercion, they are subject
to a number of duties of global justice. On the one hand, they share responsibility
for global interactional coercion as members of the collective agent of the state. On
the other hand, they share responsibility for global systemic coercion as
participants in practices such as trade and finance.
In a very important sense, the shift from discussions of justice within a single
society to discussions of justice on a global scale represents not merely the newest
theoretical work in political philosophy. Our perspectives on justice in one society
are being transformed as we reflect on three possibilities. First, it might be that the
rationales that underlie claims of social justice within the domestic sphere have no
application to the global sphere at all, and that the very idea of global justice is, at
best, an ideal of a world of many internally just nation-states. Second, perhaps the
arguments that support various requirements of social justice within the domestic
context can be extended globally. Third, problems arising within the global arena
may call for quite different principles of justice than ones that are appropriate for
the domestic context.
For more detailed discussions of the issues, see the entries under "Current
Theoretical Disagreements."
Also, to the left are additional special topics that figure within the debates regarding
human rights and global justice, but which nonetheless merit some separate
discussion because of their additional, independent normative significance.

THEORY OF REALISM
Realism is a theory of political philosophy that attempts to explain, model, and
prescribe political relations. It takes as its assumption that power is (or ought to be)
the primary end of political action, whether in the domestic or international arena.
In the domestic arena, the theory asserts that politicians do, or should, strive to
maximize their power, whilst on the international stage, nation states are seen as
the primary agents that maximize, or ought to maximize, their power. The theory is
therefore to be examined as either a prescription of what ought to be the case, that
is, nations and politicians ought to pursue power or their own interests, or as a
description of the ruling state of affairs-that nations and politicians only pursue (and
perhaps only can pursue) power or self-interest.
Political realism in essence reduces to the political-ethical principle that might is
right. The theory has a long history, being evident in Thucydides' Pelopennesian
War. It was expanded on by Machiavelli in The Prince, and others such as Thomas
Hobbes, Spinoza, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau followed (the theory was given
great dramatical portrayed in Shakespeare's Richard III). In the late nineteenth
century it underwent a new incarnation in the form of social darwinism, whose

adherents explained social and hence political growth in terms of a struggle in


which only the fittest (strongest) cultures or polities would survive. Political realism
assumes that interests are to be maintained through the exercise of power, and
that the world is characterised by competing power bases. In international politics,
most political theorists emphasise the nation state as the relevant agent, whereas
Marxists focus on classes. Prior to the French Revolution in which nationalism as a
political doctrine truly entered the world's stage, political realism involved the
political jurisdictions of ruling dynasties, whilst in the nineteenth century, nationalist
sentiments focused realists' attentions on the development of the nation-state, a
policy that was later extended to include imperialist ambitions on the part of the
major Western powers-Britain and France, and even Belgium, Germany and the
United States were influenced by imperialism. Nationalist political realism later
extended into geo-political theories, which perceive the world to be divided into
supra-national cultures, such as East and West, North and South, Old World and
New World, or focusing on the pan-national continental aspirations of Africa, Asia,
etc. Whilst the social darwinist branch of political realism may claim that some
nations are born to rule over others (being 'fitter' for the purpose, and echoing
Aristotle's ruminations on slavery in Book 1 of the The Politics), generally political
realists focus on the need or ethic of ensuring that the relevant agent (politician,
nation, culture) must ensure its own survival by securing its own needs and
interests before it looks to the needs of others.
To explore the various shades and implications of the theory, its application to
international affairs is examined.
Descriptive political realism commonly holds that the international community is
characterized by anarchy, since there is no overriding world government that
enforces a common code of rules. Whilst this anarchy need not be chaotic, for
various member states of the international community may engage in treaties or in
trading patterns that generate an order of sorts, most theorists conclude that law or
morality does not apply beyond the nation's boundaries. Arguably political realism
supports Hobbes's view of the state of nature, namely that the relations between
self-seeking political entities are necessarily a-moral. Hobbes asserts that without a
presiding government to legislate codes of conduct, no morality or justice can exist:
"Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no
Injustice if there be no Power erected, or not great enough for our security; every
man will and may lawfully rely on his own strength and art, for caution against all
other men." (Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I, Ch.13 'Of Man', and Part II, Ch.17, 'Of
Commonwealth') Accordingly, without a supreme international power or tribunal,
states view each other with fear and hostility, and conflict, or the threat thereof, is
endemic to the system.
Another proposition is that a nation can only advance its interests against the
interests of other nations; this implies that the international environment is
inherently unstable. Whatever order may exists breaks down when nations
compete for the same resources, for example, and war may follow. In such an
environment, the realists argue, a nation has only itself to depend on.
Either descriptive political realism is true or it is false. If it is true, it does not follow,
however, that morality ought not to be applied to international affairs: what ought to

be does not always follow from what is. A strong form of descriptive political
realism maintains that nations are necessarily self-seeking, that they can only form
foreign policy in terms of what the nation can gain, and cannot, by their very
nature, cast aside their own interests. However, if descriptive realism is held, it is
as a closed theory, which means that it can refute all counter-factual evidence on
its own terms (for example, evidence of a nation offering support to a neighbour as
an ostensible act of altruism, is refuted by pointing to some self-serving motive the
giving nation presumably has--it would increase trade, it would gain an important
ally, it would feel guilty if it didn't, and so on), then any attempt to introduce morality
into international affairs would prove futile. Examining the soundness of descriptive
political realism depends on the possibility of knowing political motives, which in
turn means knowing the motives of the various officers of the state and diplomats.
The complexity of the relationship between officers' actions, their motives,
subterfuge, and actual foreign policy makes this a difficult if not impossible task,
one for historians rather than philosophers. Logically, the closed nature of
descriptive realism implies that a contrary proposition that nations serve no
interests at all, or can only serve the interests of others, could be just as valid. The
logical validity of the three resulting theories suggests that preferring one position
to another is an arbitrary decision-i.e., an assumption to be held, or not. This
negates the soundness of descriptive realism; it is not a true or false description of
international relations but is reduced to an arbitrary assumption. Assumptions can
be tested against the evidence, but in themselves cannot be proved true or false.
Finally, what is the case need not be, nor need it ought to be.
That the present international arena of states is characterized by the lack of an
overarching power is an acceptable description. Evidentially, war has been
common enough to give support to political realism-there have been over 200 wars
and conflicts since the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. The seemingly
anarchic state of affairs has led some thinkers to make comparisons with domestic
anarchy, when a government does not exist to rule or control a nation. Without a
world power, they may reason, war, conflict, tension, and insecurity have been the
regular state of affairs; they may then conclude that just as a domestic government
removes internal strife and punishes local crime, so too ought a world government
control the activities of individual states-overseeing the legality of their affairs and
punishing those nations that break the laws, and thereby calming the insecure
atmosphere nations find themselves in. However, the 'domestic analogy' makes
the presumption that relations between individuals and relations between states
are the same. Christian Wolff, for example, holds that "since states are regarded
as individual free persons living in a state of nature, nations must also be regarded
in relation to each other as individual free persons living in a state of nature." (Jus
Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertractatum Trans. Joseph Drake. Clarendon Press:
Oxford, 1934, 2, p.9). Such an argument involves the collectivization of individuals
and/or the personification of states: realism may describe nations as individuals
acting upon the world stage to further their own interests, but behind the concept of
'France' or 'South Africa' exist millions of unique individuals, who may or may not
agree with the claims for improving the national interest. Some (e.g., Gordon
Graham, Ethics and International Relations, 1997) claim that the relationships
between states and their civilians are much more different than those between
nation states, since individuals can hold beliefs and can suffer whereas states
cannot. If the domestic analogy does not hold, arguably a different theory must be

proposed to explain the state of international affairs, which either means revising
political realism to take into account the more complex relationship between a
collective and individual entities, or moving to a alternative theory of international
relations.
Beyond the descriptive propositions of political realism, prescriptive political realism
argues that whatever the actual state of international affairs, nations should pursue
their own interests. This theory resolves into various shades depending on what
the standard of the national interest is claimed to be and the moral permissibility of
employing various means to desired ends. Several definitions may be offered as to
what ought to comprise the national interest: more often than not the claims invoke
the need to be economically and politically self-sufficient, thereby reducing
dependency on untrustworthy nations.
The argument in supporting the primacy of self-sufficiency as forming the national
interest has a long history: Plato and Aristotle both argued in favour of economic
self-sufficiency on grounds of securing a nation's power-nations, they both
reasoned, should only import non-necessary commodities. The power of this
economic doctrine has been often been used to support political realism: in the
eighteenth century especially, political theorists and mercantilists maintained that
political power could only be sustained and increased through reducing a nation's
imports and increasing its exports. The common denominator between the two
positions is the proposition that a nation can only grow rich at the expense of
others. If England's wealth increases, France's must concomitantly decrease. This
influential tier supporting political realism is, however, unsound. Trade is not
necessarily exclusively beneficial to one party: it is often mutually beneficial. The
economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo explained the advantages to be gained
by both parties from free, unfettered trade. Nonetheless, the realist may admit this
and retort that despite the gains from trade, nations should not rely on others for
their sustenance, or that free trade ought not to be supported since it often implies
undesired cultural changes. In that respect, the nation's interests are defined as
lying over and above any material benefits to be gained from international
collaboration and co-operation. The right to a separate cultural identity is a
separate
Political realists are often characterized as a-moralists, that any means should be
used to uphold the national interest, but a poignant criticism is that the definition of
morality is being twisted to assume that acting in one's own or one's nation's
interests is immoral or amoral at best. This is an unfair claim against serving one's
national interest, just as claiming that any self-serving action is necessarily immoral
on the personal level. The discussion invokes the ethics of impartiality; those who
believe in a universal code of ethics argue that a self-serving action that cannot be
universalized is immoral. However, universalism is not the only standard of ethical
actions. Partiality, it can be claimed, should play a role in ethical decisions;
partialists deem it absurd that state officials should not give their own nation
greater moral weight over other nations, just as it would be absurd for parents to
give equal consideration to their children and others' children. But if morality is
employed in the sense of being altruistic, or at least universalistic, then political
realists would rightly admit that attempting to be moral will be detrimental to the
national interest or for the world as a whole, and therefore morality ought to be

ignored. But, if morality accepts the validity of at least some self-serving actions,
then ipso facto political realism may be a moral political doctrine.

PARTICULARISM
Particularism, on a first approximation, is the view that the moral status of an action
is not in any way determined by moral principles; rather, it depends on the
configuration of the morally relevant features of the action in a particular context.
To illustrate, whether killing is morally wrong is not determined by whether it
violates any sort of universal moral principles, say, the moral principle against
killing; rather, its moral status is determined by its morally relevant features in the
particular context where it occurs. If it occurs in a normal context, it is wrong;
however, if it occurs in a context where the killer kills because it is the only way to
defend from a rascals fatal attack, it is not wrong. In this case, the moral principle
against killing does not determine the moral status of the action; rather, its moral
status is determined by its morally relevant features, that is, the feature of killing an
aggressor and the feature of saving ones own life, in the particular context. Now,
let us call those who contend, contra moral particularists, that the moral status of
an action is determined by moral principles the moral principlists. In the killing
case, the moral principlists might well contend that the principle against killing is
not the right sort of principle but the principle which says that killing is wrong
except it is done out of self-defense is. So still the moral principlists might contend
that it is the principle that determines the moral status of the action. However,
according to moral particularism, even in cases where the moral verdicts issued
respectively by moral principles and particular features converge, it is still the
particular features rather than universal principles that determine the moral status
of an action. This is not to say that the moral particularists are right to think so; this
merely illustrates the difference between the views of moral particularists and
principlists. The gist of moral particularism is best summed up in the words of
Terence Irwin (2000): the particulars are normatively prior to the universals.
To further illustrate the differences between moral particularism and principlism,
moral particularism can be seen as a reaction against a top-down principled
approach to morality. That is, it opposes the moral principlists idea that we can get
morally right answers by applying universal moral principles to particular situations.
In more detail, in moral principlists conception of morality, morality is made up of a
true and coherent set of moral principles. It follows from this conception that if one
negates the existence of moral principles, one negates morality altogether. For
without moral principles, it seems that there would be no standards against which
the moral status of actions can be determined.
The above-mentioned principlists conception of morality has been, without a
doubt, a dominant view. This can be confirmed by examining the work in normative
ethics. One chief concern of normative ethics has been to formulate basic moral
principles that govern the moral terrain. It is generally believed by the normative
ethicists that in basic moral principles lies the ultimate source of moral truths. The
normative ethicists, though arguing among themselves over what the correct basic
moral principles are, all tacitly agree that a major part of normative ethics is built

upon the articulation of the basic moral principles and their application to practical
moral issues.
While the debate amongst normative ethicists is continuing about the correct
formulation and application of the basic moral principle(s), the common principled
conception of morality underlying it has not received proper attentionnot until the
appearance of the contemporary particularists.
Contrary to the principlists, the particularists argue that morality does not depend
upon codification into a true and coherent set of moral principles. On their view,
general principles fail to capture the complexity and uniqueness of particular
circumstances. Exceptions to principles are common and exceptions to exceptions
are not unusual (Davis 2004; Tsu 2010). In other words, there are no exceptionless
principles of the sort which the principlists have in mind. The particularists believe
that the moral status of an action is not determined by moral principles; instead it
always relies on the particular configuration of its contextual features. In brief,
moral particularists take a bottom-up approach and, as Irwin pointed out, they give
the normative priorities to the particulars. That is, according to moral particularism,
the moral status of an action is determined by its morally relevant features in a
particular context.
More slowly, one chief motivation for moral particularism to place emphasis on the
particulars comes from their observation that the whole history of moral philosophy
has witnessed brilliant moral philosophers searching for true moral principles that
codify the moral landscape, yet no principles have generated wide agreement.
There can be many explanations for this, but one is particularly salient: there are
no true moral principles to be had in the first place. Parallel situations like this are
common in many corners of philosophy. Many brilliant philosophers have spent
their whole lifes time analyzing concepts of probability, truth or knowledge, trying
to supply non-trivial, non-circular necessary and sufficient conditions for them. As
is generally acknowledged today, it is extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible,
to come up with a widely accepted analysis. One plausible explanation is that no
analysis of the kind is to be had in the first place. This is not to say that there
cannot be alternative explanations. But until they are produced and justified, there
is at least a prima facie case for doubting whether conceptual analysis can produce
non-trivial, non-circular necessary and sufficient conditions for the meanings of
many philosophically interesting terms. Likewise, as hardly any moral principle
receives wide acceptance, there is also a prima facie case that can be made for
doubting whether there are any true moral principles in the first place, until an
alternative explanation of why agreement on principles is so hard to come by is
produced and justified.
Adding to the untenability of the principled conception of morality, moral
particularists argue, is the fact that the moral status of an action is context-sensitive
in character. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends entirely on the
particular contexts where it takes place; no universal principles, which are only
equipped to deal with homogeneous cases, are capable of capturing the contextsensitive character of the moral status of an action in various heterogeneous
contexts. Take the action of killing for instance. A principle against killing will run
into exceptions in cases of self-defense and a further qualified principle against

killing except in cases of self-defense will run into exceptions again in cases of
overreacting self-defense. The exceptions may well go on infinitely. This shows
that, the moral particularists believe, no principles are able to handle the essentially
context-sensitive character of the moral status of an action.
To forestall some possible misunderstanding, moral particularism is not just the
view that the moral status of an action is not determined by moral principles of the
absolute kind the absolute moral principle against killing; rather, it is the more
encompassing and more radical view that it is not determined by moral principles
of the pro tanto kind either. The difference between absolute moral principles
and pro tanto ones roughly lies in the fact that the former purport to determine the
moral status of an action conclusively, whereas the later do not; instead, the pro
tanto moral principles, on a standard construal, merely specify the contribution a
morally relevant feature makes to the determination of the moral status of an
action. To use an example to illustrate, the difference between an absolute
principle against lying and a pro tanto principle against lying lies in the fact that
according to the absolute principle, lying is wrong (period) whereas according to
the pro tanto principle, lying is wrong-making. To put it differently, according to the
absolute principle against lying, the fact that an action has a feature of lying
conclusively determines its wrongness whereas according to the pro tanto principle
against lying, the same fact merely contributes to the wrongness of the action and
leaves open the possibility that it is right overall. For instance, if an action has not
only a feature of lying, but also a feature of saving a life, then the wrongness the
feature of lying contributes to the action may well be outweighed by the rightness
the feature of saving a life contributes to the action. Overall, the action may still
turn out to be right, despite its violation of the pro tanto principle against lying.
Moral particularism, as we have explained, not only opposes absolute principlism,
i.e. the idea that the moral status of an action is determined by absolute principles,
but also pro tanto principlism, i.e. the idea that pro tanto moral principles jointly
determine the moral status of an action. As moral particularists see things, there
are neither true absolute principles nor true pro tanto principles. They both are
bound to run into exceptions in some cases. In what follows, we will introduce the
arguments for absolute moral principlism and pro tanto principlism and moral
particularists responses to them.
Before we move on, however, there is an important caveat to be noted about
terminology. It is this. Some philosophers use prima facie principles to mean pro
tanto principles. This is largely due to W. D. Rosss influence. Ross was perhaps
the first philosopher who used prima facie to mean pro tanto. Strictly speaking,
however, there is a difference in the meanings of these two phrases, as Ross
himself later recognized and apologized. The difference between prima facie and
pro tanto principles can be put in the following way: a prima facie principle
specifies a moral duty at first glance whereas a pro tantoprinciple specifies a moral
duty sans phrase, unless it is overridden by other moral duties. To illustrate with
examples, a pro tanto principle against lying means that other things being equal,
we have a duty not to lie. By contrast, a prima facie principle against lying means
that at first glance, we have a duty not to lie; however, as we take a closer
examination of the facts of the situations, we discover that we do not in fact have

such a duty, as, for example, in the case where we are playing a bluffing game, the
rule of which states that lying to the other contestants is permitted.
Now, having clarified the distinction between pro tanto principle and prima facie
principle, it has to be noted, for our purposes, that pro tanto principlism is the view
that the moral status of an action is determined jointly by pro tanto principles,
instead of by prima facie principles we just elucidated. In fact, the prima facie
principles do not in any way determine the moral status of an action, for as we
have explained, they are merely indicative of its moral status (as our moral duty) at
first glance.
With the above caveat in mind, we can proceed to examine the arguments for
absolute moral principlism and pro tanto principlism, and moral particularisms
responses to them.

NATIONALISM
According to Hans Kohn nationalism is a state of mind permeating the large
majority of people. It is the supreme loyalty of a man towards his nation.
According to Prof Ashirvatham, Nationalism is a process by which nationalities are
transferred into political units. Nationalism is a belief, creed or political ideology that
involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one's nation.
Nationalism involves national identity, by contrast with the related construct of
patriotism, which involves the social conditioning and personal behaviors that
support a state's decisions and actions.
From a political or sociological perspective, there are two main perspectives on the
origins and basis of nationalism. One is the primordialist perspective that describes
nationalism as a reflection of the ancient and perceived evolutionary tendency of
humans to organize into distinct groupings based on an affinity of birth. The other
is the modernist perspective that describes nationalism as a recent phenomenon
that requires the structural conditions of modern society in order to exist.

An

alternative perspective to both of these lineages comes out of Engaged theory, and
argues that while the form of nationalism is modern, the content and subjective
reach of nationalism depends upon 'primordial' sentiments.
There are various definitions for what constitutes a nation, however, which leads to
several different strands of nationalism. It can be a belief that citizenship in a state

should be limited to one ethnic, cultural, religious, or identity group, or that


multinationality in a single state should necessarily comprise the right to express
and exercise national identity even by minorities. The adoption of national identity
in terms of historical development has commonly been the result of a response by
influential groups unsatisfied with traditional identities due to inconsistency
between their defined social order and the experience of that social order by its
members, resulting in a situation of anomie that nationalists seek to resolve. This
anomie results in a society or societies reinterpreting identity, retaining elements
that are deemed acceptable and removing elements deemed unacceptable, in
order to create a unified community.

This development may be the result of

internal structural issues or the result of resentment by an existing group or groups


towards other communities, especially foreign powers that are or are deemed to be
controlling them.

COSMOPOLITANISM
Cosmopolitanism is the ideology that all human ethnic groups belong to a single
community based on a shared morality. A person who adheres to the idea of
cosmopolitanism in any of its forms is called a cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. The
word cosmopolitan, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolits (citizen of
the world), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral
and socio-political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views
is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, are (or can
and should be) citizens in a single community. Different versions of
cosmopolitanism envision this community in different ways, some focusing on
political institutions, others on moral norms or relationships, and still others
focusing on shared markets or forms of cultural expression. In most versions of
cosmopolitanism, the universal community of world citizens functions as a positive
ideal to be cultivated, but a few versions exist in which it serves primarily as a
ground for denying the existence of special obligations to local forms of political
organizations. Versions of cosmopolitanism also vary depending on the notion of
citizenship they employ, including whether they use the notion of 'world citizenship'
literally or metaphorically. The philosophical interest in cosmopolitanism lies in its
challenge to commonly recognized attachments to fellow-citizens, the local state,
parochially shared cultures, and the like.
Cosmopolitanism slowly began to come to the fore again with the renewed study of
more ancient texts, but during the humanist era cosmopolitanism still remained the
exception. Despite the fact that ancient cosmopolitan sources were well-known and
that many humanists emphasized the essential unity of all religions, they did not

develop this idea in cosmopolitan terms. A few authors, however, most notably
Erasmus of Rotterdam, explicitly drew on ancient cosmopolitanism to advocate the
ideal of a world-wide peace. Emphasizing the unity of humankind over its division
into different states and peoples, by arguing that humans are destined by Nature to
be sociable and live in harmony, Erasmus pleaded for national and religious
tolerance and regarded like-minded people as his compatriots (Querela Pacis).
Early modern natural law theory might seem a likely candidate for spawning
philosophical cosmopolitanism. Its secularizing tendencies and the widespread
individualist view among its defenders that all humans share certain fundamental
characteristics would seem to suggest a point of unification for humankind as a
whole. However, according to many early modern theorists, what all individuals
share is a fundamental striving for self-preservation, and the universality of this
striving does not amount to a fundamental bond that unites (or should unite) all
humans in a universal community.
Still, there are two factors that do sometimes push modern natural law theory in a
cosmopolitan direction. First, some natural law theorists assume that nature
implanted in humans, in addition to the tendency to self-preservation, also a fellowfeeling, a form of sociability that unites all humans at a fundamental level into a
kind of world community. The appeal to such a shared human bond was very thin,
however, and by no means does it necessarily lead to cosmopolitanism. In fact, the
very notion of a natural sociability was sometimes used instead to legitimate war
against peoples elsewhere in the world who were said to have violated this
common bond in an unnatural way, or who were easily said to have placed
themselves outside of the domain of common human morality by their barbaric
customs. Second, early modern natural law theory was often connected with social
contract theory, and although most social contract theorists worked out their views
mostly, if not solely, for the level of the state and not for that of international
relations, the very idea behind social contract theory lends itself for application to
this second level. Grotius, Pufendorf, and others did draw out these implications
and thereby laid the foundation for international law. Grotius envisioned a great
society of states that is bound by a law of nations that holds between all states
(De Iure Belli ac Paci, 1625, Prolegomena par. 17; Pufendorf, De Iure Naturae et
Gentium, 1672).
The historical context of the philosophical resurgence of cosmopolitanism during
the Enlightenment is made up of many factors: The increasing rise of capitalism
and world-wide trade and its theoretical reflections; the reality of ever expanding
empires whose reach extended across the globe; the voyages around the world
and the anthropological so-called discoveries facilitated through these; the
renewed interest in Hellenistic philosophy; and the emergence of a notion of
human rights and a philosophical focus on human reason. Many intellectuals of the
time regarded their membership in the transnational republic of letters as more
significant than their membership in the particular political states they found
themselves in, all the more so because their relationship with their government was
often strained because of censorship issues. This prepared them to think in terms
other than those of states and peoples and adopt a cosmopolitan perspective.
Under the influence of the American Revolution, and especially during the first
years of the French Revolution, cosmopolitanism received its strongest impulse.

The 1789 declaration of human rights had grown out of cosmopolitan modes of
thinking and reinforced them in turn.

In the eighteenth century, the terms cosmopolitanism and world citizenship were
often used not as labels for determinate philosophical theories, but rather to
indicate an attitude of open-mindedness and impartiality. A cosmopolitan was
someone who was not subservient to a particular religious or political authority,
someone who was not biased by particular loyalties or cultural prejudice.
Furthermore, the term was sometimes used to indicate a person who led an
urbane life-style, or who was fond of traveling, cherished a network of international
contacts, or felt at home everywhere. In this sense the Encyclopdie mentioned
that cosmopolitan was often used to signify a man of no fixed abode, or a man
who is nowhere a stranger. Though philosophical authors such as Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Diderot, Addison, Hume, and Jefferson identified themselves as
cosmopolitans in one or more of these senses, these usages are not of much
philosophical interest.
Especially in the second half of the century, however, the term was increasingly
also used to indicate particular philosophical convictions. Some authors revived the
Cynic tradition. Fougeret de Montbron in his 1753 autobiographical report, Le
Cosmopolite, calls himself a cosmopolitan, describes how he travels everywhere
without being committed to anywhere, declaring All the countries are the same to
me and [I am] changing my places of residence according to my whim (p. 130).
Despite the fact that only a few authors committed themselves to this kind of
cosmopolitanism, this was the version that critics of cosmopolitanism took as their
target. For example, Rousseau complains that cosmopolitans boast that they love
everyone [tout le monde, which also means the whole world], to have the right to
love no one (Geneva Manuscript version of The Social Contract, 158). Johann
Georg Schlosser, in the critical poem Der Kosmopolit writes, It is better to be
proud of one's nation than to have none, obviously assuming that
cosmopolitanism implies the latter.
Yet most eighteenth-century defenders of cosmopolitanism did not recognize their
own view in these critical descriptions. They understood cosmopolitanism not as a
form of ultra-individualism, but rather, drawing on the Stoic tradition, as implying
the positive moral ideal of a universal human community, and they did not regard
this ideal as inimical to more particular attachments such as patriotism. Some, like
the German author Christoph Martin Wieland, stayed quite close to Stoic views.
Others developed a cosmopolitan moral theory that was distinctively new.
According to Kant, all rational beings are members in a single moral community.
They are analogous to citizens in the political (republican) sense in that they share
the characteristics of freedom, equality, and independence, and that they give
themselves the law. Their common laws, however, are the laws of morality,
grounded in reason. Early utilitarian cosmopolitans like Jeremy Bentham, by
contrast, defended their cosmopolitanism by pointing to the common and equal
utility of all nations. Moral cosmopolitanism could be grounded in human reason,
or in some other characteristic universally shared among humans (and in some

cases other kinds of beings) such as the capacity to experience pleasure or pain, a
moral sense, or the aesthetic imagination. Moral cosmopolitans regarded all
humans as brothers (though with obvious gender bias) an analogy with which
they aimed to indicate the fundamental equality of rank of all humans, which
precluded slavery, colonial exploitation, feudal hierarchy, and tutelage of various
sorts.
Some cosmopolitans developed their view into a political theory about international
relations. The most radical of eighteenth-century political cosmopolitans was no
doubt Anacharsis Cloots (Jean-Baptiste du Val-de-Grace, baron de Cloots, 17551794). Cloots advocated the abolition of all existing states and the establishment of
a single world state under which all human individuals would be directly subsumed.
His arguments drew first of all on the general structure of social contract theory. If it
is in the general interest for everyone to submit to the authority of a state that
enforces laws that provide security, then this argument applies world-wide and
justifies the establishment of a world-wide republic of united individuals, not a
plurality of states that find themselves in the state of nature vis--vis each other.
Second, he argues that sovereignty should reside with the people, and that the
concept of sovereignty itself, because it involves indivisibility, implies that there can
be but one sovereign body in the world, namely, the human race as a whole (La
rpublique universelle ou adresse aux tyrannicides, 1792; Bases constitutionelles
de la rpublique du genre humain, 1793).
Most other political cosmopolitans did not go as far as Cloots. Immanuel Kant,
most famously, advocated a much weaker form of international legal order,
namely, that of a league of nations. In Toward Perpetual Peace (1795) Kant
argues that true and world-wide peace is possible only when states organize
themselves internally according to republican principles, when they organize
themselves externally in a voluntary league for the sake of keeping peace, and
when they respect the human rights not only of their citizens but also of foreigners.
He argues that the league of states should not have coercive military powers
because that would violate the internal sovereignty of states. Some critics argued
in response that Kant's position was inconsistent, because on their view, the only
way to fully overcome the state of nature among states was for the latter to enter
into a federative union with coercive powers. The early Fichte transformed the
concept of sovereignty in the process, by conceiving it as layered, and this enabled
them to argue that states ought to transfer part of their sovereignty to the federal
level, but only that part that concerns their external relations to other states, while
retaining the sovereignty of the states concerning their internal affairs. Romantic
authors, on the other hand, felt that the ideal state should not have to involve
coercion at all, and hence also that the cosmopolitan ideal should be that of a
world-wide republic of fraternal non-authoritarian republics (the young Friedrich
Schlegel).
Especially the first objection has been repeated ever since, but more recent
interpretations have questioned its legitimacy (Kleingeld 2004, 2012), arguing that
Kant can also be read as advocating the loose league as a first step on the road
toward a federation with coercive powers. Because joining this stronger form of
federation should be a voluntary decision on the part of the peoples involved, to
honor their political autonomy, the strong federation is not a matter of coercive

international right. On this interpretation, Kant's defense of the loose league is


much more consistent. Kant also introduced the concept of cosmopolitan law,
suggesting a third sphere of public law in addition to constitutional law and
international law in which both states and individuals have rights, and where
individuals have these rights as citizens of the earth rather than as citizens of
particular states. In addition to moral and political forms of cosmopolitanism, there
emerged an economic form of cosmopolitan theory. The freer trade advocated by
eighteenth-century anti-mercantilists, especially Adam Smith, was developed
further into the ideal of a global free market by Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch
(Kleingeld 2012). His ideal was a world in which tariffs and other restrictions on
foreign trade are abolished, a world in which the market, not the government, takes
care of the needs of the people. Against mercantilism, he argued that it is more
advantageous for everyone involved if a nation imports those goods which are
more expensive to produce domestically, and that the abolition of protectionism
would benefit everyone. If other states were to gain from their exports, they would
reach a higher standard of living and become even better trading partners,
because they could then import more, too. Moreover, on Hegewisch's view, after
trade will have been liberalized world-wide, the importance of national
governments will diminish dramatically. As national governments are mostly
focused on the national economy and defense, he argued, their future role would
be at most auxiliary. The freer the global market becomes, the more the role of the
states will become negligible.

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