Week 5: Global justice

Essay question

  • Do I owe my fellow countrymen more than I owe to other human beings?

Key readings

  1. Brock, Gillian, Global Justice, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring, 2015)
  2. Pogge, Thomas, "Assisting" the Global Poor, in Deen Chatterjee (ed.), The Ethics of Assistance: Morality and the Distant Needy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, ch. 13
  3. Nagel, Thomas, The Problem of Global Justice, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 33, no. 2 (March, 2005), pp. 113-147
  4. Miller, David, National Responsibility and Global Justice, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, vol. 11, no. 4 (December, 2008), pp. 383–399

Further reading

  • Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979, part III
  • Blake, Michael, Distributive Justice, State Coercion, and Autonomy, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 30, no. 3 (July, 2001), pp. 257–296.
  • Brock, Gillian, Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Caney, Simon, Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, ch. 4.
  • Caney, Simon, Humanity, Associations, and Global Justice: In Defence of Humanity- Centred Cosmopolitan Egalitarianism, The Monist, vol. 94, no. 4 (October, 2011), pp. 506- 534.
  • Nagel, Thomas, The Problem of Global Justice, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 33, no.2 (March, 2005), pp.113-147.
  • Pogge, Thomas, World Poverty and Human Rights, Oxford: Polity, 2002.
  • Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples: With, the Idea of Public Reason Revisited, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.
  • Sangiovanni, Andrea, Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 35, no.1 (Winter, 2007), pp. 3-39.
  • Valentini, Laura, Justice in a Globalized World: A Normative Framework, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • Ypi, Lea, Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Exam questions

  • 'The principles of justice that apply within nation-states are different from those that apply between them.'
  • Does justice recognize borders?
  • To what extent does the value of national self-determination limit what people in poor countries can justly demand of those in rich countries?
  • Do citizens of different nations owe anything to one another?