Chapter 21 Rawls on Cosmopolitanism and Global Justice
Justyna Miklaszewska
Abstract
How does cosmopolitanism fit into Rawls’ political philosophy? And why, in The Law of Peoples, does he reject the idea of global citizenship and global justice? In this article, I shall argue that Rawls’ attitude towards cosmopolitanism is similar to Kant’s; and within the framework of a polemic with Martha Nussbaum’s interpretation of Kantian cosmopolitanism as an ethical idea, I shall focus on Kant’s political thought as a source of inspiration for Rawls. I will conclude from this discussion that the originality of the Rawlsian standpoint lies in the justification he offers for cosmopolitanism on political grounds, where he modifies his theory of justice and combines it with a pragmatic as- sessment of politics.
Cosmopolitanism has recently become one of the most important issues dis- cussed in the liberal political philosophy together with the problem of social justice which is now considered on a global scale (Brown et al. 2010). In The Law of Peoples, John Rawls rejects the idea of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and ‘global justice’ (notions he uses interchangeably) because they imply a state in which everyone in the world is situated in terms of ‘justice as fairness’, enjoys personal freedom (human rights) and at least ‘minimum income’ (Rawls 1999, pp. 119–120). Rawls does not bother to discuss the concept of a world government which this would require, nor any of the problems related to it (Nagel 2010), because he entirely rejects the idea, as developed in the works of Thomas Pogge and Charles Beitz (Beitz 1979; Pogge 1989). Rawls presents a key argument against global justice in this sense in Chapter xi of his book, where he says that
the foreign policy of a liberal people—which is our concern to elabo- rate—will be to act gradually to shape all not yet liberal societies in a liberal direction, until eventually (in the ideal case) all societies are liberal. But this foreign policy simply assumes that only a liberal demo- cratic society can be acceptable. Without trying to work out a reasonable liberal Law of Peoples, we cannot know that non liberal societies cannot be acceptable. The possibility of a global original position does not show that, and we can’t merely assume it. rawls 1999, pp. 82–83
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According to Rawls, the original position implies only two principles of ‘justice as fairness’, and for this purpose a purely hypothetical situation is invented. This situation, together with the unique application of the idea of social contract, is supposed to produce, impartially, the most basic and evi- dent rules of justice which everyone can agree upon. The problem of a proper political system is closely related to this question since a fulfillment of the idea of ‘justice as fairness’ must lead us to determine the shape, not only of ‘the well-ordered’ or just society, but also of the State in which this idea is imple- mented. Thus, Rawls in his seminal book, A Theory of Justice, in line with these requirements, describes the best system of government as being a constitu- tional liberal democracy (Rawls [1971] 1973, p. 222). Its institutions and forms are the subject of further research done by him, as well as the problem of the universal character of this kind of regime. The question of whether a liberal democracy might form the foundations for a global (universal) political sys- tem would have to be argued on the basis of a new form of international law, and then worked out in detail. Thus in The Law of Peoples he advocates an- other version of cosmopolitanism when he argues that the road to a ‘Society of well-ordered Peoples’ leads through the constitution of the Law of Peoples used among e xisting liberal and decent societies, and is not derived from the first original position.1 Furthermore, according to Rawls, it appears that this simple theoretical transition from the original position, described in A Theory of Justice, to global justice and the World-state might in practice give rise to undesirable consequences, such as wars and unjust acts undertaken in the name of justice.
1 Cosmopolitanism as a Realistic Utopia
The establishment of global justice based on the original position would require the imposition of a liberal-democratic political system on all the peoples and countries in the world, which seems an unjust and deeply utopian
1 Rawlsian open critique of cosmopolitanism, together with global redistribution, is inter- preted by Philip Pettit as the manifestation of his anti-cosmopolitan standpoint (Pettit 2005, p. 172). However, according to Pauline Kleingeld and Eric Brown, cosmopolitanism is not a single coherent view but has many different versions. In most of them a positive ideal of universal community of citizens is cultivated. Rawls in fact rejects the strict moral version of this idea, leading to the constitution of the World-state, and advocates, at the same time, a political form of cosmopolitanism which requires a much weaker form of international legal order (Kleingeld and Brown, 2013).