Global Justice: A Utopia and Concern of Humanitarianism
-
Gong Qun
Abstract
Global justice or the lack thereof has internal connections with global poverty. Global justice is an ideal pursuit of cosmopolitanism, which regards basic human needs as its rightful object. The right to life, from the point of view of global justice, is the most fundamental in the list of Human Rights. International anarchy and the current international economic order, however, cast a utopian shadow on the realization of this right when we consider the de facto institutions and the ostensible goal of impartial love for everyone. Humanitarian aid is another approach to the problem of contemporary global poverty. Its difficulty lies first in people’s different conceptions of obligation and donation. They consider the former as duty while the latter is seen to lie beyond the call of duty. Second, in terms of a correlation between right and duty, since everyone has the right to life, the duty falls accordingly upon organizations or individuals. Meanwhile, donation as duty is not perfect obligation, thus is not compulsory either. Finally, international humanitarian aid is constrained by nationalism and partial love. Hence, in the light of either government or individual, the humanitarian aid approach is beset with challenges.
Global justice has gained academic importance worldwide since John Rawls’ later works. By contrast to domestic justice, it is a theory of justice that proposes to include all human beings. Global justice stands for a kind of utopian justice in regard to both the institutional path and the humanitarian aid approach. I shall examine the theory of global justice under these two aspects.
Literature
Jones, Charles, Global Justice: defending Cosmopolitanism, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999.Suche in Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel, Perpetual Peace, tranl. by He Zhaowu, Beijing: Commercial Press 1990.Suche in Google Scholar
McIntyre, Alasdair, “Is Patrioism a Virtue?”, Lindley Lecture, Lawrence, Kan, University of Kansas 1984.Suche in Google Scholar
Milanovic, Branko, World Report: Measuring International and Global Inequality, Princeton: Princeton University Press 2005.Suche in Google Scholar
Miller, David, National Responsibility and Global Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199235056.001.0001Suche in Google Scholar
Nagel, Thomas, Equality and Partiality, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991.Suche in Google Scholar
O’Neil, Onora, Faces of Hunger: An Essay on Poverty, Justice, and Development, London: Allen & Unwin 1986.Suche in Google Scholar
O’Neill, Onora, “Transnational Justice”, in: Political Theory Today, ed. by David Held, Oxford: Polity 1991, p. 276–304.Suche in Google Scholar
Pogge, Thomas, Kant, Rawls and Global Justice, tranl. by Liu Xin and Xu Xiangdong, Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House 2010.Suche in Google Scholar
Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Harvard: Harvard University Press 1971.Suche in Google Scholar
Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples, Harvard: Harvard University Press 1999.Suche in Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines, tranl. by Wang Yu and others, Beijing: Commercial Press 2001.Suche in Google Scholar
Singer, Peter, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3, 1972, p. 229–243.Suche in Google Scholar
Tan, Kok-Chor, Justice without Borders: Cosmopolitianism, Nationalism, and Patriotism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004.10.1017/CBO9780511490385Suche in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial Preface
- Vorwort des Herausgebers
- An Exercise in Global Philosophy
- I: Global Justice – 全球正义
- A Vindication of Distributive Justice
- Principles of Justice in a Changing World Order
- Global Justice: A Utopia and Concern of Humanitarianism
- On the Justifications of Contemporary Global Justice Theories
- Political Reconciliation in Light of Global Injustices
- The Interdependence of Domestic and Global Justice
- Kant on Structural Domination and Global Justice
- The Ethical Constraint on War
- II: Global Philosophy – 全球哲学
- Sheng-Sheng (生生) as Being-Between-Generations: On the Existential Structure of Confucian Ethics
- The Openness of Life-world and the Intercultural Polylogue
- How to Justify Principles of Justice
- Universalism vs. “All Under Heaven” (Tianxia / 天下) – Kant in China
- Three Types of Cosmopolitanism? Liberalism, Democracy, and Tian-xia
- III: Global Justice and Progress – 全球正义与进步
- Rethinking Progress Today
- Progress and Human Rights Justice as Evaluating Criteria for Global Developments
- Justice in Anthropocentrism. An Attitude Towards Contemporary Human Beings and Their Intellectual Crisis
- Towards a Transcultural Concept of Justice Based on Self-respect
- Justice as a Personal Virtue and Justice as an Institutional Virtue: Mencius’s Confucian Virtue Politics
- Moral Progress: Between Justification and Innovation
- Forms of Injustice and Regression
- Compulsive Growth and the Dynamics of “Perverted Progress”
- IV: Varia and Miscellaneous – 杂文拾萃
- Subjekt und Person: Zwei Selbst-Bilder des modernen Menschen in kulturübergreifender Perspektive
- Heideggerian Existence after Being and Time: In the Nameless ─ and a Brief Comparison of Namelessness and the Underlying Philosophy of Language between Heideggerian and Buddhist Perspectives
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial Preface
- Vorwort des Herausgebers
- An Exercise in Global Philosophy
- I: Global Justice – 全球正义
- A Vindication of Distributive Justice
- Principles of Justice in a Changing World Order
- Global Justice: A Utopia and Concern of Humanitarianism
- On the Justifications of Contemporary Global Justice Theories
- Political Reconciliation in Light of Global Injustices
- The Interdependence of Domestic and Global Justice
- Kant on Structural Domination and Global Justice
- The Ethical Constraint on War
- II: Global Philosophy – 全球哲学
- Sheng-Sheng (生生) as Being-Between-Generations: On the Existential Structure of Confucian Ethics
- The Openness of Life-world and the Intercultural Polylogue
- How to Justify Principles of Justice
- Universalism vs. “All Under Heaven” (Tianxia / 天下) – Kant in China
- Three Types of Cosmopolitanism? Liberalism, Democracy, and Tian-xia
- III: Global Justice and Progress – 全球正义与进步
- Rethinking Progress Today
- Progress and Human Rights Justice as Evaluating Criteria for Global Developments
- Justice in Anthropocentrism. An Attitude Towards Contemporary Human Beings and Their Intellectual Crisis
- Towards a Transcultural Concept of Justice Based on Self-respect
- Justice as a Personal Virtue and Justice as an Institutional Virtue: Mencius’s Confucian Virtue Politics
- Moral Progress: Between Justification and Innovation
- Forms of Injustice and Regression
- Compulsive Growth and the Dynamics of “Perverted Progress”
- IV: Varia and Miscellaneous – 杂文拾萃
- Subjekt und Person: Zwei Selbst-Bilder des modernen Menschen in kulturübergreifender Perspektive
- Heideggerian Existence after Being and Time: In the Nameless ─ and a Brief Comparison of Namelessness and the Underlying Philosophy of Language between Heideggerian and Buddhist Perspectives
