Camille: Nagel's Theory of Global Justice

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 When considering the duties we owe to one another and the requirements of global justice, I found Nagel’s exploration of the difference between cosmopolitanism and the political view fascinating. The central question Nagel seems to be grappling with is one of extension: should the egalitarian principles of justice be coherently extended from the internal practices of nation-states to a global arena? What is the moral unit of justice, individuals or societies? What levels of duty and justice do we owe to everyone vs. what we owe fellow citizens of our state?

At first thought, the cosmopolitan framework seems natural to me. Adopting a Rawlsian perspective, it is unjust to allow factors that are arbitrary from a moral point of view to impact inequality and opportunity. In society, this means that we adopt principles of justice to protect each other’s statuses as moral beings, and the difference principle ensures protection for the most vulnerable groups. Thus, it seems natural that, as fellow human beings, we owe one another the same duties of justice by being members of the human race and “universal community.”  

However, Rawls’ moral unit of justice wasn’t the individual; it was society. He did not create a framework for how individuals should treat each other as private individuals but rather what we owe each other as fellow citizens through our shared institutions. Rawls’ principles of justice for a society, devised under the hypothetical veil of ignorance, attempt to ensure that no one’s life prospects or access to opportunity are hindered based on arbitrary factors, like being born into a poor family instead of a rich one. In support of a cosmopolitan view, though, isn’t “the accident of being born in a poor rather than a rich country as arbitrary a determinant of one’s fate as the accident of being born in a poor rather than a rich family in the same country?” (119). It seems highly arbitrary that the fate of where one is born and the society they are brought up in affects their ability to live a quality life. Borders alone seem like an arbitrary distinction line that can carry great weight on the prospects of a human’s life.

However, Nagel takes the political view, arguing that “justice is something we owe through our shared institutions only to those with whom we stand in a strong political relation (121). As Hobbes described, justice can only be achieved within a sovereign state; as Rawls illuminates, the existence of these states gives justice its application as the associative obligation we owe to another, given the special relations under common institutions. To draw more nuance to his argument on global justice, Nagel proposes we consider a distinction between human rights and economic/social rights. He argues that while human rights fall under a humanitarian duty that applies to everyone, duties of justice (relating to more positive freedoms of economic and social equality) only apply within a state.

I think there are a lot of interesting questions to explore, particularly on allocating responsibilities for reducing global injustices and collective action problems. For example, how do we distribute costs associated with addressing climate change? One of my biggest concerns with Rawls and Nagel’s take on the political view is the unit of moral justice. While it makes sense under theories of contract that societies should be the locus of understanding justice, there are a lot of more globalized issues that require collective action and more global sovereignty or authority. Especially in an increasingly globalized world, some problems can’t be thoroughly addressed by only considering the duties of economic and social equality to those within our respective societies.

Comments

  1. Tutu JereissatiApril 27, 2023 at 12:33 AM

    A quick comment on this line of thought:
    The point your blog post brings up, and I wanted to question, was how we distribute responsibility when considering collective action problems and how they were seen in the past. I also was going to question the legitimacy of the “unit of moral justice.” As you mentioned, how do we account for “moral justice” in light of the past? Many of the actions taken are considered morally apprehensible now, but should we view them during the time they were enacted? For example, burning down a forest because one was trying to find more timber might not have counted as an opposing unit of justice during that time. But now, it is clear to see the negative impacts the action caused. Is there a higher price to pay for actions generated in the past? How can we delineate responsibility when perhaps the time when these actions are taken was deemed acceptable? When considering collective action problems, how responsible is a country for its past? If they are, how do we delineate responsibility?

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  2. Ella SmithApril 27, 2023 at 2:47 AM

    What an expansive post, Camille! I think that the issue of global climate change that you bring up is super interesting here. In Nagel's account for how we can conceive of a global sovereign, he ponders what the basis of equal consideration across nations can be. He says that "If the default [basis] really is a basic humanitarianism, permitting voluntary interaction for the pursuit of common interests, then something more is needed to move us up toward the higher standard of equal consideration. It will not emerge merely from cooperation and the conventions that make cooperation possible" (143).

    This part of the reading made me think of global climate change—it is such a unique problem of global scale that has never been experienced before, and it is about to become a much, much more pressing issue. When we are pondering what "something more" to push the cooperation needed for global justice, maybe we can consider climate change. It is a mutual threat, that every individual has an interest in fighting (or at least will soon, as the effects of it become more apparent), and depends on collective engagement. Humanitarian issues such as starvation and poverty in third world countries are clearly pressing, but not a threat to every individual in the world. Furthermore addressing these humanitarian issues is not contingent upon collective action, as it can be addressed by NGOs or individual, wealthy nation-states.

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