By Julian Culp
Abstract:In this paper I maintain that the so-called global justice debate in contemporary political philosophy and normative political theory has contributed to answering the question of how to conceive such a universal grammar. After all, one central question of this debate is how, if at all, we should conceive certain universal rules of justice for solving social and political conflicts that transcend the borders of nation-states as well as of Western societies. I discuss two critiques of viewing the global justice debate as an apt source for articulating a universal moral grammar. One critique claims that the debate is Western-centric. I recognize that a significant part of the philosophical global justice debate has been Western-centric and that there are very strong reasons for finding this problematic. I highlight, however, that influential philosophers like Amartya Sen have already engaged with Indian conceptions ofpolitical morality. In addition, I point out that the discourse theorists like Forst and Nancy Fraser (2009), who have actively participated in the global justice debate, have always been urging to democratize the debate about global justice by including many more voices in the formulation of a conception of global justice. The other critique maintains that the global justice debate suffers from liberal parochialism. In response to this critique I challenge, in particular, Katrin Flikschuh’s claim that the global justice debate has extrapolated liberal principles of justice from the domestic to the global realm without considering whether the domestic and the global contexts differ in normatively relevant ways.
Published:
2019
Online available:
fqp.luiss.it