Do patriotic ties limit global justice duties?

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 9, Issue 1-2, 2005, Pages 127-150

  Arneson, Richard J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Autonomy; Coercion; Distributive justice; Global justice; Michael Blake; Richard W. Miller

Indexed keywords

EID: 51149096347     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-004-3323-x     Document Type: Article

References (34)

1. The locus classicus of libertarian advocacy is still Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
2. My focus here is on two excellent essays: Richard W. Miller, "Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern," Philosophy and Public Affairs 27 (1998), pp. 202-224;
3. and Michael Blake, "Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy," Philosophy and Public Affairs 30 (2001), pp. 257-296.
4. For criticism of these writings (and more) very much in the spirit of this essay, see Kok-Chor Tan, "Patriotic Obligations," The Monist 86 (2003), pp. 434-453.
5. Significant formulations of egalitarian justice include John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999);
6. Amartya Sen, Inequality Reconsidered (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991);
7. and Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).
8. Mention of "proportionality" here just points to a topic that needs to be addressed. What is appropriate proportionality? Act-consequentialism holds that force and violence and the threat of these evils should be deployed just in case doing so produces the best outcome all things considered. Violence is proportionate on this view if and only if it produces a better outcome, even if only by a tiny jot, than would any alternative act that refrains from violence. The defense of act-consequentialism lies beyond the scope of this essay.
9. See Thomas Hurka, "The Justification of National Partiality," in Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan (eds.), The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 139-157;
10. Samuel Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, Chapter 6);
11. and Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), Chapter 5.
12. For criticism, see Richard Arneson, "Consequentialism vs. Special-Ties Partiality," The Monist 86 (2003), pp. 382-401.
13. See Amartya Sen, "Equality of What?," in Sterling McMurrin (ed.), Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Volume 1 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980);
14. John Rawls, "Social Unity and Primary Goods," in John Rawls, Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 359-387;
15. G. A. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice," Ethics 89 (1989), pp. 906-944; also the references in footnote 3 of this essay.
16. To clarify: I suggest that "What should be distributed?" has less practical significance than the issue, whether justice obligations have global or restricted scope. Of course there is also "What form should the distribution take?" - should the principle of distribution be equalize, maximin, prioritize, maximize-the-aggregate, or something else entirely - and this issue sometimes has clear policy implications. I am indebted to Peter Vallentyne for this phrasing of the two questions. The scope issue that is my focus in the text can be seen as an aspect of "What form should the distribution take?"
17. As characterized in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 72 and 132-133.
18. See also Amartya Sen, Collective Choice and Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970), p. 138;
19. Amartya Sen, "Rawls Versus Bentham: An Axiomatic Examination of the Pure Distribution Problem," in Norman Daniels (ed.), Reading Rawls (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 283-292.
20. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 90. See also Nozick's references to the relevant work by Hart and Rawls. Nozick of course is quoting the principle of fairness as a preliminary to demolishing it.
21. See A. John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 101-142.
22. A recent discussion is in Garrett Cullity, "Moral Free Riding," Philosophy and Public Affairs 24 (1995), pp. 3-34.
23. The defense of the principle of fairness in the text draws from Richard J. Arneson, "The Principle of Fairness and Free-Rider Problems, Ethics 92 (1982), pp. 616-633.
24. In this connection, see Samuel Scheffler's discussion of the "distributive objection" in Scheffler, Boundaries and Allegiances, pp. 66-81.
25. I deny that coercing someone automatically puts one under special obligations to that person. Coercion is an act to be assessed like any other (according to its consequences, I would hold). But I do not argue in this essay against the claim that it can matter morally whether one does or allows harm to others, as deontologists hold. Nor is it the case that duties of global justice entirely consist of duties to aid distant needy strangers. A deontologist will pay special heed to duties to refrain from harming distant needy strangers (in certain ways that violate rights). Consider in this connection the agricultural subsidies that the United States and European governments lavish on their farmers, which enable them to compete on unfair terms with poor farmers in developing nations. "Reducing these subsidies and removing agricultural trade barriers is [sic] one of the most important things that rich countries can do for millions of people to escape poverty all over the world," said Ian Goldin, the World Bank's Vice President for External Affairs. "It's not an exaggeration to say that rich countries' agricultural policies lead to starvation" (quoted from Elizabeth Becker, "Western Farmers Fear Third-World Challenge to Subsidies," New York Times, Tuesday, September 9, 2003, p. A8).
26. Miller, "Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern," p. 210. Press, 1998), Chapters 4-5.
27. Miller, "Cosmopolitan Respect and Patriotic Concern," p. 215.
28. We can also accept that some forms of priority for friends and others to whom one has special ties are morally permissible. What I deny in this essay is that patriotic priority is acceptable. Merely being co-residents of the same country does not suffice to establish a special tie that warrants partiality. Nor can individuals acquire such obligations merely by voluntarily asserting them.
29. One might entertain the thought that the poor who live in proximity to the rich and super rich suffer from relative deprivation that renders them objectively worse off than distant others who are materially more poor. But this sort of consideration, whether correct or incorrect, has no tendency to justify patriotic priority. To the extent that relative deprivation really does make one worse off according to the proper measure of people's condition, the global egalitarian justice function would already properly adjust for this factor.
30. Recall that this essay does not take a stand as to how demanding such pure beneficence requirements to aid the needy are. My claim is that whatever their size, one cannot whittle them into smaller size by instituting coercion to benefit oneself and then claim one now has a strict duty to compensate the coerced that trumps the beneficence obligation.
31. Michael Blake develops this line of thought in Blake, "Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy."
32. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 374.
33. On the notion of autonomy, see also George Sher, Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Chapters 3 and 4.
34. See Robert Nozick, Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 15-44.