Humanities Core: Winter 2006

Bietz study questions for pp. 127(t)-136(m), 143(b)-153(b)

(127) Does traditional international political theory—or “the morality of states”—recognize duties concerning the welfare of foreign people, aside from duties of mutual aid and charity?

(128) Why for Beitz is it a mistake to apply “contractarian” principles within societies but not across them?

(129) Does Beitz take himself to be defending Rawls’s principles of justice, or simply drawing out their implications on the assumption that they can be independently defended?

(129) What for Rawls are we to appraise as just or unjust according to principles of justice?

(129) On Rawls’s first principle, what is to be distributed? Will it fulfill the principle to provide very few basic liberties, so long as liberties are equal for everyone?

(129) In Rawls’s second principle, what is to be distributed? Does the principle allow social and economic inequalities in some cases? Will it fulfill the principle if inequalities are of some benefit to everyone? Is the principle fulfilled if political offices are open to certain groups of people?

(130)What do parties choose in Rawls’s “original position”?

(130) What does “the veil of ignorance” make parties to the original position ignorant of?

(130) Which principles would rational choosers choose, in Rawls’s view?

(130-1) Why in a “cooperative scheme for mutual advantage” are principles necessary? What must be fairly distributed?

(131) Why for Rawls would there be no occasion for justice in the absence of cooperation?

(132-3) Why for Rawls do his two principles apply within societies but not across them?

(135) Rawls’s international principles assume a world of just states (that is, “ideal conditions” or “ideal theory”). What for Beitz must be the case for these principles to apply in actual, non-ideal conditions, in which states are not just?

(144) In Beitz’s view, what features of international independence are most important for questions of distributive justice?

(145) What are some of the reasons why interdependence tends to benefit rich and poor countries unequally?

(146-7) How does vulnerability give rise to unequal relations of power?

(147) In what ways can interdependence affect domestic policy?

(148)What is the “global regulative structure”?

(151) Why in Beitz’s view should we assume the parties to Rawls’s original position do not know what society they are a member of?

(152) How would a “global difference principle” apply to each person of the world? What does it require us to do for the world’s worst off person?