Humanities Core: Winter 2007

Lecture Outline 6

I. Rawls’s theory: Only about a single society. What we should say about global poverty and inequality is an open question.

II. Beitz: apply Rawls’s domestic theory on a global scale.

a. Because of “globalization”

b. International obligations as derivative (p. 157)

c. Rawls’s “two principles” of justice must apply globally, if they apply at all, including the difference principle.

d. Is Beitz right about how the extension is supposed to go?

III. Rawls own approach: questions of global justice are essentially questions about justice between nations.

a. Unlike Beitz’s cosmopolitanism: the view that reasoning about justice is to consider individuals as such, regardless of any group to which they might happen to belong.

b. The original position

i. Beitz: a global original position, in which the parties do not know even whether there are distinct societies.

ii. Rawls: an international original position: the parties represent nations, not knowing which they represent (p. 145)

c. The principles: a principle of national sovereignty and non-intervention, a principle allowing war in self-defense, a principle requiring that treaties be kept, and principles for the conduct of war (pp. 145-6).

i. The “natural duties that protect human life.” These duties might attach conditions to the right of sovereignty (p. 151).

ii. No global difference principle

IV. Beitz: Rawls ignores the realities of globalization.

a. Features: the growth of international trade and investment (p. 152), a “global regulative structure” which makes up the “constitutional structure of the world economy” (p. 155), and other “political and legal institutions,” such as rules of international property, which “influence the global distribution of income and wealth” (p. 155).

b. An international explanation?

i. Farm subsidies

ii. What trade rules would be fair? The ones representatives of each country would agree to not knowing what society he or she represents.

V. Beitz’s further argument:

a. STEP ONE: “the requirements of justice apply to institutions and practices…in which social activity produces relative or absolute benefits or burdens that would not exist if the social activity did not take place.” (Betiz, p. 148)

b. STEP TWO: Yes, for two reasons.

i. Trade and investment creates economic benefits (greater growth, more efficient production) as well as costs (financial crises, job changes) that would not exist if societies were isolated from one another (“autarky”) (Beitz, pp. 152-3).

ii. These costs and benefits constitute “relative or absolute benefits and burdens” (p. 154).

c. STEP THREE: there exists a “global regulative structure,” which determines how different countries fare by comparison to one another. (Betiz, pp. 154-5)

d. STEP FOUR: “Since [national] boundaries are not coextensive with the scope of social cooperation, they do not mark the limit of social obligations.” (Betiz, p. 156)

e. STEP FIVE: “Thus [on Rawls’s theory] the parties to the original position cannot be assumed to know that they are members of a particular national society, choosing principles of justice primarily for that society. The veil of ignorance must extent to all matters of national citizenship….” (Betiz, p. 156)

f. STEP SIX: “Assuming that Rawls’s arguments for the two principles are successful, there is no reason to think the content of the principles would change as a result of enlarging the scope of the original position so that the principles would apply to the world as a whole.” (Beitz, p. 156).

g. CONCLUSION: So if Rawls’s two principles apply at all, they apply globally. According to the “global difference principle,” then, inequalities have to be “minimized if [this is] necessary to maximize the position of the (globally) least advantaged group” (Beitz, p. 157).

VI. Does the argument succeed?

a. Libertarianism: there are no cooperatively produced goods to be distributed. (Beitz’s reply, p. 156-7)

b. A single unified scheme of cooperation?

i. A “global regulative structure”?

ii. Leaders of governments as a global legislature. Rawls can agree.

VII. A gap in Beitz’s argument

a. Between STEP FOUR to STEP FIVE.

b. Beitz is assuming what he is trying to prove.

VIII. Cosmopolitanism

a. A hidden premise?

b. Other reasons to accept it.

i. “I am neither Athenian nor Greek, I am a citizen of the world.”

ii. Respect for individuals precludes respecting groups as such.

iii. Each human being deserves an equal chance at a prosperous life.