Why Rawls is Not a Cosmopolitan Egalitarian

Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia?

Volumn , Issue , 2008, Pages 95-113

  Wenar, Leif ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Egalitarianism; Global citizens; Global cooperation; Political liberalism; Theory of justice

Indexed keywords

EID: 84891314847     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.1002/9780470776612.ch6     Document Type: Chapter

References (74)

1. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (hereafter LoP), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
2. The current essay updates my article "The Legitimacy of Peoples," in Global Politics and Transnational Justice, ed. P. de Greiff and C. Cronin, Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002, pp. 53-76. There are substantial revisions throughout, and the final section is new.
3. See for example the papers by Charles Beitz and Allen Buchanan in the "Symposium on John Rawls's The Law of Peoples," Ethics, 110/4 (2000);
4. Thomas Pogge, "The Incoherence between Rawls's Theories of Justice," Fordham Law Review, 72 (2004): 1739-59.
5. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (hereafter TJ), revised edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999;
6. John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, (hereafter JasF), ed. Erin Kelly, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001;
7. see also LoP, pp. 30-2.
8. TJ, p. 63.
9. TJ, pp. 331-3.
10. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, with a new afterword, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999;
11. "Cosmopolitan Ideas and National Sentiment," Journal of Philosophy, 80/10 (1983): 591-600.
12. Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989;
13. "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 23/3 (1994): 193-224. I am here eliding some significant differences between Beitz's and Pogge's views.
14. To take an example of Pogge's, "The current distribution in national rates of infant mortality, life expectancy and disease... [can] be accounted for, in large part, by reference to the existing world market system" (Realizing Rawls, p. 237).
15. Pogge supported a globalized difference principle, but also suggested that a Rawlsian should favor a more modest Global Resource Tax as a step toward an egalitarian world order. Pogge is no longer engaged in the Rawlsian project, although he would welcome support from Rawlsians for his current proposal, a Global Resource Dividend.
16. See chapter 8 of his World Poverty and Human Rights, New York: Polity Press, 2002.
17. LoP, pp. 23-30. Many have objected that Rawls's category of "peoples" is not apt for a global normative theory, because its use ignores the arbitrariness of international boundaries and the existence of important sub-national groups. Although I share some of these misgivings, I will not discuss this issue here.
18. LoP, p. 57.
19. Realizing Rawls, p. 246.
20. LoP, pp. 35-43.
21. LoP, p. 117.
22. LoP, pp. 117-18.
23. LoP, pp. 119-20.
24. LoP, p. 112, fn 44.
25. LoP, p. 113.
26. LoP, p. 36.
27. See, for example, chapter 7 of Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights.
28. LoP, pp. 119-20.
29. Rawls's attention to legitimacy finds its fullest expression in Political Liberalism (hereafter PL), New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
30. See David Estlund, "The Survival of Egalitarian Justice in John Rawls' Political Liberalism," Journal of Political Philosophy, 4/1 (1996): 68-78;
31. Allen Buchanan, "Justice, Legitimacy, and Human Rights," in The Idea of a Political Liberalism, ed. Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf, Boston, MA: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp. 73-89;
32. Burton Dreben, "On Rawls and Political Liberalism," in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed. Samuel Freeman, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 316-46.
33. PL, pp. 427-9.
34. "The Unity of Rawls's Work," Journal of Moral Philosophy, 1/3 (2004): 265-75.
35. PL, pp. 16, 109;
36. LoP, pp. 65-8, 83, 93;
37. JasF, p. 6.
38. PL, pp. xvi-xviii.
39. PL, pp. 36-8.
40. PL, pp. 8-15.
41. PL, p. 8.
42. PL, pp. 156-7;
43. LoP, p. 141.
44. LoP, p. 18.
45. For the view that peoples should be treated as free and equal regardless of how they see themselves, see Beitz, "Cosmopolitan Ideas and National Sentiment," p. 596;
46. Pogge, Realizing Rawls, p. 270;
47. Andreas Føllesdal, "The Standing of Illiberal States, Stability and Toleration in John Rawls' 'Law of Peoples,'" Acta Analytica, 18 (1997): 152-3.
48. A point made well by Pogge in "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," pp. 209-10.
49. For critiques of Rawls on these topics see, for example, Charles Beitz, "Rawls's Law of Peoples," Ethics, 110 (2000): 669-96;
50. Allen Buchanan, "Rawls's Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished Westphalian World," Ethics, 110 (2000): 697-721;
51. Pogge, "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," and "Rawls on International Justice," Philosophical Quarterly, 51 (2001): 246-53;
52. Simon Caney, "Survey Article: Cosmopolitanism and the Law of Peoples," Journal of Political Philosophy, 10 (2002): 95-123.
53. In "The Legitimacy of Peoples," I proposed a supplemental original position argument-here omitted for reasons of space-that aims to give more attention to individuals as members of the global economic order.
54. LoP, pp. 33-4.
55. See Buchanan, "Rawls's Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished Westphalian World," p. 708.
56. LoP, pp. 29, 34.
57. LoP, pp. 25-8, 107.
58. LoP, pp. 106-7.
59. On this point see Pogge, "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," pp. 208-11.
60. TJ, p. 18.
61. Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, p. 169.
62. The language of "ultimate units" of a theory is from Pogge, "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," p. 48.
63. Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, pp. 125-76;
64. Pogge, "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," and World Poverty and Human Rights, pp. 196-215.
65. Darrel Moellendorf, Cosmopolitan Justice, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002, pp. 78-80.
66. Pogge, "An Egalitarian Law of Peoples," p. 196.
67. Thus there can be no pure "cosmopolitan law of persons."
68. Andrew Kuper, "Rawlsian Global Justice: Beyond the Law of Peoples to a Cosmopolitan Law of Persons," Political Theory, 28 (2000): 640-74.
69. It is important to emphasize that cosmopolitans have said explicitly that they have not attempted to present a unified and comprehensive cosmopolitan theory of the kind I am discussing.
70. See, for example, Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, p. 6;
71. "Rawls's Law of Peoples," p. 695.
72. Brian Barry, Political Argument: A Reissue with a New Introduction, New York and London: Wheatsheaf Harvester, 1990 (1965), p. lxxiv.
73. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, pp. 181-3.
74. For Beitz's further thoughts on the tripartite division of theories, see his Afterword to the 1999 edition.