Jan-Christoph Heilinger Cosmopolitan Responsibility
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Jan-Christoph Heilinger Cosmopolitan Responsibility Jan-Christoph Heilinger Cosmopolitan Responsibility Global Injustice, Relational Equality, and Individual Agency An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org Knowledge Unlatched The Open Access book is available at www.degruyter.com ISBN 978-3-11-060078-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-061227-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-061128-1 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 Licence. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019952790 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Jan-Christoph Heilinger, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover: Greater Antilles Islands in the Caribbean Sea, AKG Images Printing & binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com Für Rasmus und Felix und für Nina The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that’s wrong with the world. —Paul Farmer La majorité du monde habite là où nous ne regardons pas ; là où nous ne voulons plus voir, les Suds, les Suds dans le Nord. —Yanick Lahens Someone should be doing something about it. —Iris M. Young Acknowledgements The act of writing is asolitary business, but doing philosophyisacollective undertaking.The arguments Idefend in this book draw on the work of many others. To highlight afew:Iris M. Young’swork inspired, as will become obvious throughout the book, my entire project on cosmopolitan responsibility. My account of global relational egalitarianism buildsheavilyonElizabeth Anderson’stheory of democratic equality.Volker Gerhardthas directed my philosophical attention to the role of the individual person and Philip Kitcher has strengthened my belief in the possibility of progress;bothhavebeen invaluable teachers and supporters. Furthermore, Iamextremelygrateful for the philosophical inspiration, ad- vice, support and feedback Ireceivedinone form or another from many people over the years of workingonthis text.Among them are Verina Wild, Deborah Zion, JamesWilson, Heather Widdows, Eva Weber-Guskar,Friedhelm vonBlancken- burg, Rodrigue Thomas, Aron Telegdi-Csetri, UweSteinhoff, MarcoSolinas, Jan Slaby,Christos Simis, Alexander Schulan, SamuelScheffler,VeronikaSager, Mehran Rezaei, Martin Rechenauer,Philippe Quesne,Alison Phipps,Konrad Petrovszky,Eva Maria Parisi, LiavOrgad, Julian Nida-Rümelin, Fabian Newger, Thomas Nagel, Nikil Mukerji, OliverMüller,Srinjoy Mitra, Christopher McDougall, GeorgMarckmann, Ansgar Lyssy, Tanja Krones,Isabel Kranz, Colin King,S.Karly Kehoe, Elizabeth Kahn, Matthias Jung,Markus Huppenbauer,Christoph Henning, NoraHeinzelmann, André Grahle,Anna Goppel, Anca Gheaus, Sebastiaan Gar- velink,Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, Orsolya Friedrich, Carina Fourie, Rainer Forst, Richard Fonseca, Alan Fishbone, KarstenFischer,Gerhard Ernst,Jake Ephros, Lisa Eckenwiler,Lorenzo Del Savio, Angus Dawson, Housamedden Darwish, Katja Crone, Fausto Corvino, MollyCochran, Ryoa Chung,Francis Cheneval, Gillian Brock, Christine Bratu, Jason Branford, Suzanne Bouclin, Eike Bohlken, Monika Betzler, HolgerBaumann, Sarah-Aylin Akgül, EvaAlisic, Darline Alexis, Maike Albertzart,and Zed Adams. Iamalsograteful for the helpful comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers for de Gruyter. Ialso want to express my gratitude for the possibility to present my work and for the feedback Ireceivedatthe Universities of Auckland, Bamberg, Birmingham, Cologne, Delhi, Dortmund,Frankfurt, Kiel, Melbourne, Munich, Passau,Re- gensburg, Saint Andrews,St. Gallen, Sydney,Tübingen, Zurich, as well as at Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, Ecole Normale Supérieure Port-au-Prince, New York University, Scuola Superiore Sant’AnnaPisa, the Universidad de Chile and the UniversityofGhana. Financial and institutional support for my research was not onlyprovided by my home institutions during the time of workingonthe manuscript,the Univer- OpenAccess. ©2020 Jan-Christoph Heilinger,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110612271-001 X Acknowledgements sities of Zurich and Munich, but alsobyFritz Thyssen Foundation, German Aca- demic ExchangeService (DAAD), German Research Foundation (DFG), Global Young Academy, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Earlier this year,Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa hosted aworkshop de- dicated to this manuscript priortoits publication. My special thanks for valuable criticism go to all the participants. My encounters and discussions with students and colleagues at Ecole Nor- male Supérieure de l’Université d’Etat d’Haiti, whereIregularly teach, also had an importantimpact on my thinkingabout the topics of this book.Iam very grateful for this. It was again agreat pleasure to work with de Gruyter publishers, Berlin. My sincerethanks go to Christoph Schirmer,Tim Vogeland FlorianRuppenstein. Iamimmenselythankful for my friends and my family, for their unwavering love, support and encouragement.Idedicate this book to Nina—the best partner I can imagine for sunshine and storms in life; and inspiring critical reader of my manydrafts—and our perfectlywonderful children, Felix and Rasmus,with all my loveand gratitude. Cologne, October 2019 JCH Contents Introduction: The challenge. Global injustice and the individual agent 1 1 The ‘circumstances of cosmopolitanism’ 5 2 The idea of cosmopolitanism 8 3 Towards a global political ethics 9 4 The pragmatic impulse 11 5 Overview 12 Part I The cosmopolitan ethos Chapter 1: Cosmopolitanism. The ideal of global justice, past and present 21 1 Global citizenship 21 2 Moral cosmopolitanism as egalitarian universalism 23 3 The evolution of cosmopolitanism 28 4 The current debate on global justice. A brief overview 43 5 Global justice and global ethics 57 Chapter 2: Equality. Towards global relational egalitarianism 65 1 Domestic luck vs. relational egalitarianism 68 2 What is the point of global equality? 92 3 Global luck egalitarianism—a critique 93 4 Towards global relational equality 97 5 Global relational egalitarianism—for and against 109 6 The priority of relations, the relevance of distributions 115 Chapter 3: Pragmatism. Practice and the possibility of progress 119 1 Cosmopolitanism as a personal way of life 119 2 From criterial monism to pragmatic pluralism 123 3 Elements of a pragmatic ethics 125 4 The role of philosophy 131 XII Contents Part II Challenges Chapter 4: Impact. Do my acts matter? 137 1 Competing problems 137 2 Making no difference? Imperceptible harm and threshold effects 142 3 The most good you can do? 147 4 Making a difference in social structures 151 5 The responsibility to make a difference 159 Chapter 5: Impartiality. The fragmentation of morality 161 1 The puzzle of partiality 161 2 Preference for oneself 164 3 Relationships and integrity 168 4 Parental partiality 172 5 Preference for compatriots 183 6 Two standpoints and the fragmentation of morality 190 Chapter 6: Imperfection. Overdemandingness and the inevitability of moral failure 193 1 Cosmopolitan demands and the danger of moral failure 193 2 Demanding too much vs. demanding enough 195 3 Can cosmopolitan moral requirements be met? 207 4 Necessarily non-effective moral requirements 212 5 Cosmopolitan sincerity 220 Conclusion: The ethos of cosmopolitan responsibility 221 1 Responding to global injustice 221 2 Four features of global individual responsibility 222 3 The cosmopolitan ethos 226 4 Citizens of the world 234 Bibliography 236 Index 251 Introduction: The challenge. Globalinjusticeand the individualagent The world we live in is unjust.Ajustworldwould not feature adistribution of resourceswherein afew of the richest people control massive,evenincreasing amountsofwealth—while large numbers of people live in dire poverty.Nor would ajustworld feature thousands of people dying every dayfrom unsanitary living conditions,oreasilypreventable diseases. Nor would so manypeople suf- fer oppression, exploitation, and exclusion from the decision making processes that have asignificant impact on their lives. Ajust world would not be one in which nearlyall of the women who die as aresultofchildbirth are from low- and middle-income countries;nor one in which excessive consumption of natu- ralresources in the Global North has led to negative environmental outcomes such as achangingclimate severelyaffecting thoseliving elsewhere, not to men- tion future generations; nor one in which people seeking to flee war,persecu- tion, deprivation or disaster are often deniedaccess to security,are sent back, or knowingly kept in places wheretheir basic rights are violated. And ajust world would clearlynot be one in which manyofthese formsofinequality and injustice, despite of some significant improvement and progress,appear to be on the increase due to such diverse reasons as ongoing unfair trade regu- lations, rising nationalism and supremacism, ongoingenvironmental pollution, and so on. This list of injustices reigning in today’sglobalised world—with its un- precedented international