Defending Rawls's Law of Peoples against Cosmopolitan Critiques

After the World War II, we have witnessed the increase in international cooperation in almost all aspects of human life. Various global organizations are established for this purpose, for example, the United Nations, European and World Trade Organization. There was a prevalent optimism that, the international cooperation in all these international organizations will reconstruct everyone's identity and each will eventually see herself as the citizen of the world first and foremost.;Cosmopolitan theorists consider this ongoing phenomenon to empirically support their conviction that global justice should be justice among individuals rather than justice among states as traditionally conceived. Some cosmopolitans apply the leading liberal philosopher John Rawls's domestic theory of justice to analyze global issues. They conclude that Rawls would agree that global institutions should be reformed following a global difference principle so that the vast inequalities in income and wealth can be reduced.;However, Rawls's publication of his own theory of international justice surprisingly disappoints these cosmopolitans. In these cosmopolitans' eyes, Rawls betrays his own liberal concerns for individuals and he becomes a defender of the traditional view of global justice of nations.;Now the question is whether Rawls becomes more conservative in his international theory and keeps distance from his liberal stance in his domestic theory. I believe the answer is no. So the puzzles I try to solve in my dissertation include how a liberal should conceive the most fundamental interests of individuals and what the reasonable global intuitions are required to best protect these interests.;I argue that a liberal should consider self-respect or the sense of worth to be the most fundamental interest of individuals, and their sense of worth partly comes from collectively develop their society provided that the society is well-ordered. Well-ordered societies includes liberal and decent ones, both of which provide necessary social conditions for individuals to develop and sustain their sense of worth. The sense of worth is the precondition for any agent to be able to take her life to be valuable. Without this sense of worth, she would consider her life to be dull and miserable. Liberals, who cherish the equal value and autonomy of human beings, should agree that the sense of the worth is the core of the dignity of human beings. This sense of worth is supported at least partly by respect shown by the society and others to the individual in the choices she makes. One of the choices an individual member of a well-ordered society makes is to participate in the collective decision-making for developing the society, from which process she has a sense of pride and honor. Because this sense of pride and honor partly constitute the sense of worth of a member of a well-ordered society, the global society should respect the integrity, autonomy and independence of a society that provides necessary social conditions for its members to develop a sense of worth, so that individual members may preserve their self-respect in maintaining and developing their shared society. Thus, Rawls's international theory of justice protects his liberal values.;One may ask since liberals are concerned with the equal worth of human beings, don't cosmopolitans more closely adhere to liberal values in envisioning that liberal political liberties should be universalized and included in basic human rights? My answer is no. If a nonliberal society is decent, it equips itself with all necessary social conditions to support the development of self-respect as that of capacities to make reasonable decisions. Thus, from a liberal point of view of respecting individuals, members of a decent society should be allowed to remain in their society and develop their society according to the plan they make collectively, and this decision should be respected. Any reform in the global institutions that involves forcing upon these individuals immediate change for liberal values violates liberal values themselves.;Lastly, how should a liberal deal with the inequalities in wealth and income in the world? Are cosmopolitans right in insisting that there should be certain transnational institutions to reduce the gap among societies even if all of them are well-ordered? The answer is still no. With the fundamental idea that the international original position should consist of representatives of societies established, we need to examine what would naturally follow from it. Representatives will choose to help burdened societies to acquire well-orderedness because this helps realize democratic peace, which is more likely to occur among well-ordered societies. The representatives will also choose not to continue redistributing wealth because doing so does not contribute to the social conditions for self-respect but rather violates the collective autonomy of members of well-ordered societies by imposing a goal of development on them. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).