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Document Details : Title: Global Responsibility and Distributive Justice Author(s): HEYD, David Journal: Ethical Perspectives Volume: 19 Issue: 4 Date: 2012 Pages: 677-702 DOI: 10.2143/EP.19.4.2182831 Abstract : The question posed in the present contribution is the following: can individual human beings and whole nations be expected to extend their concern for the welfare and relative social position to all people in the world? This is a question regarding the responsibility individuals and governments should assume regarding faraway people rather than of abstract principles of global justice. The concept of ‘prospective responsibility’ is adopted as the most fitting to this question. The argument developed here is that human concern, and hence prospective responsibility, is limited by ‘special relations’, that is to say, cannot be globalized. The source of these restrictions is shown to be partly psychological and partly theoretical. The nature of these restrictions is analysed in the light of the ideal/non-ideal distinction and the way it applies to the local sphere of justice but not to the international. It is argued that contract-based justice is theoretically (not only empirically) impossible to universalize. Furthermore, prospective responsibility is typically assigned to individuals rather than to states, which can at most be held responsible to their own citizens. Finally, some non-contractual forms of global responsibility are discussed, like that of a superpower to other nations that are under threat of serious violation of justice, or that of the ‘international community’ to which powerless nations or groups appeal for help. These are also shown to be based on some kind of special relations. |
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