World Justice, Global Politics and Nation States: Three Ethico-Political Problems

Abstract

This paper identifies three sets of problems of a specific ethico-political type, generated by the interrelationship between ethics and politics in the areas of world justice and global politics. One instance in which this interrelationship is tested is that of the conflict of duties and values as it appears in the particular domain of the relations amongst sovereign nation states as well as between them and other social groups. Following the general Introduction, the main body of the paper contains the following three sections. (1) Without elaborating on the detailed mechanics of Kant's theory of perpetual peace, Section II discusses criticisms against the Kantian version of world peace in the context of which the first problem is encountered. The problem identified here is the ambiguity as to whether the establishment of a federated kind of peaceful co-existence between sovereign nations depends on the moral improvement of mankind or whether it is the other way round--i.e. whether ethical progress is a necessary presupposition or, rather, a consequence of political peace. That is, what is here identified as worrying is that the direction of dependence is not clear in such a proposal. Furthermore, such an approach, when applied to certain cases of inter-state differences, yields a rather alarming result as to the de-politicization of national states (Section II.2). (2) Yet such a type of international federalism requires a certain, peculiar, kind of legal enforcement of order without recourse to a supra state. So a re-examination of the notion of a legal order in general is needed. Given these requirements, Section III moves on to discuss moral conflict from the standpoint of relativism as it appears in the ethical and in the legal spheres. The second of our problems, identified in this section, is that, before discussing world justice we must first acknowledge the special relation and asymmetry between ethical standards and legal rules required by such a world order. (3) Finally, Section IV asks whether, given the above two problems, it is possible to envisage theoretically the logical possibility of moral conflict-resolution by postulating unchanging and encompassing super-norms of conduct. These special norms, if possible, would be able to direct action unequivocally when confronted with ethical or other dilemmas of duties (involving equally valid but conflicting demands among sovereign nations). This is the third problem. The Conclusion offers an evaluation of the whole discussion. These three ethico-political problems are shown to be interrelated. The overall thrust of the discussion is that it points to a number of philosophical difficulties in understanding the changing role of national states in a globalized political, economic and cultural environment. Accordingly, such difficulties have repercussions for any moral criticism of issues of world justice and global politics. I must make clear at the outset, though, that the discussion does not concern international relations theories per se.