| In the dissertation I explore how John Rawls derives his moderate list of human rights, and how he justifies that the principle of human rights is normatively binding upon outlaw states, which are excluded from the (international) original position in which that principle is reached. The purpose of my study is to defend Rawls against an accusation as follows: his proposal of human rights fails to protect the reasonable interests of individuals in nonliberal societies.;I am primarily concerned with the basis of the Law of Peoples in regard to the following two issues. First, is it true that, as Rawls claims, once the (international) original position is open to parties representing individuals across the world, the basis of the Law of Peoples would become "too narrow" (Rawls, Collected Papers, p.550)? Second, would those parties, once in that position, reject, as Kok-Chor Tan claims, "global principles that condone the kinds of institutional arrangements associated with DHSs [i.e., decent hierarchical societies]" (Tan, Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice, p.35)? I will argue that neither is necessarily the case if individuals from different societies enter the (international) original position to deliberate, behind the veil of ignorance, upon the terms of international social cooperation between distinct societies, without knowing which kind of society they would turn out to live in. I conjecture that they would reach the same principles as those derived by the agents representing well-ordered peoples.;I will further argue that the (international) original position open to individuals across the world is a more advantageous procedure than that open only to representatives of well-ordered peoples. First of all, the former establishes the universal normative binding force of the principle of human rights and justifies that principle with reference to the essential interests of individuals in nonliberal societies. Secondly, deriving the Law of Peoples from the (international) original position open to individuals from various societies is more in spirit with what Rawls conceives of as the ultimate justification of the principles of justice, namely, "wide and general reflective equilibrium" (Rawls, Collected Papers, p.321). |
