Global ethics and human responsibility: challenges for the theory and the discipline

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify the main challenges for global ethics as an academic discipline. This article assesses the moral and practical justifications for common global principles. Individual and institutional responsibility on the supranational level is connected with the standard of human rights and the relational aspects of the globalised world. It also points out two separate problems which global ethics should aim to solve. The first is metatheoretical and methodological and concerns the discipline's lack of self-reflexiveness. The second is essential and concerns the clash of values (human rights and sovereignty). Regarding the second problem, the main future challenge of global ethics is to construct a measurement to bring political decisions closer to morality and more strongly connect rights with responsibilities.

Keywords:

• human rights
• responsibility
• sovereignty
• global ethics
• conflict of values

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Eric Palmer and Sirkku Hellsten for their fruitful comments on the previous version of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Center of Science in Poland [grant number 211/01/D/HS5/01463].

Notes on contributor

Rafał Wonicki is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Sociology at the University of Warsaw. He is the author of Dispute about Democratic Constitutional State. Jürgen Habermas' Theory Towards a Liberal, Republican and Social Concept of State (2007), and co-editor of The Crisis of Political Identity and the Process of European Integration (2006). A number of his recent papers and chapters address the issues of political rationality, legitimization of power, global justice and global ethics problems.