Kok-Chor Tan

Luck egalitarianism provides one powerful way of defending global egalitarianism. The basic luck egalitarian idea that persons ought not to be disadvantaged compared to others on account of his or her bad luck seems to extend naturally to the global arena, where random factors such as persons’ place of birth and the natural distribution of the world’s resources do affect differentially their life chances. Yet luck egalitarianism as an ideal, as well as its global application, has come under severe criticisms in recent debate. My aim in this article is to restore plausibility to the luck egalitarian idea, and to suggest how it could then provide a plausible grounding for global egalitarianism. To do this, I will propose a more modest but also more defensible conception of luck egalitarianism that can also strengthen the case for global distributive justice

Michael Blake argues that states are the primary sites of justice for persons and that the function of international justice is to ensure that states interact with each other in ways that preserve the capacity of each to realize justice for their own members. This paper will argue that justice among states requires more of states than that they preserve and maintain each other's capacity as primary sites of justice. Justice among states will require some justification, as well, of the claims of states over resources and territory within their borders. Such a justification, I suggest, must presume a global institutional order, and this will introduce the problem of coercion in the international domain. International coercion will have implications for Blake's understanding of international economic justice since it is premised on the claim that the domestic context is coercive in a way that the international arena is not.

This chapter examines two basic philosophical challenges for the idea of reparations for past injustices (using colonialism as the focal point). The first challenge is that requiring people today to make reparations for an injustice they themselves did not commit is unfair. The second is that if reparative claims are invoked because of lingering injustices, then recalling the past is in fact normatively redundant if lingering present injustices can be handled by forward-looking principles. In response to the first challenge, I argue that the unfairness worry is deflected if we adopt a collectivist-model of responsibility, ie, one that holds states instead of individuals to be the responsible actor. Against the redundancy objection, I suggest that reparative arguments can supplement and reinforce forward-looking distributive principles.

In Globalizing Justice, Richard Miller offers a novel understanding of the grounds and scope of the demands of global justice. Miller argues that our duties to the global poor should be conceived relationally, that is, as deriving from the very complex and substantial relationships that we, members of rich countries, have with members of poor countries. In this review essay, I ask whether a relational approach to justice is necessary for the kinds of global duties Miller wishes to advance (that fall short of an egalitarian distributive duty). Indeed, so I argue, the global relations Miller describes go beyond grounding a duty to assist the needy, but are sufficient to generate more substantial global egalitarian obligations

Two classes of arguments are often deployed by the anti-global egalitarians against attempts to universalize the demands of distributive equality. One are arguments attempting to show that global egalitarians have misconstrued the reasons for why equality matters domestically, and hence have wrongly extended these reasons to the global arena. These arguments hold that the boundary of distributive justice is effectively coextensive with the boundaries of state. The other are arguments that attempt to show that membership in political societies generates special duties among members that may outweigh the demands of global egalitarianism. These arguments appeal to the ethical significance of state boundaries and membership. In my defense of global egalitarianism, I reject both the attempts to limit the boundary of justice and the attempts to give state boundaries special moral significance and priority. In particular, I will argue that the boundary of justice cannot coincide with the boundaries of states when the justice of the boundaries is at issue

In some discussions on global distributive justice, it is argued that the factthat the state exercises coercive authority over its own citizens explains whythe state has egalitarian distributive obligations to its own but not to otherindividuals in the world at large. Two recent works make the case that the globalorder is indeed coercive in a morally significant way for generating certainglobal distributive obligations. Nicole Hassoun argues that the coercivecharacter of the global order gives rise to global duties of humanitarian aid.Laura Valentini argues that the existence of global coercion triggers globaldistributive duties more demanding than mere humanitarianism, but notnecessarily as demanding as cosmopolitan egalitarian duties. This reviewessay suggests that Hassoun’s and Valentini’s depictions of the global orderas coercive entitle them to the stronger conclusion that there are globalegalitarian duties

Liberal nationalism is a boundary‐making project, and a feature of this boundary‐making enterprise is the belief that the compatriots have a certain priority over strangers. For this reason it is often thought that liberal nationalism cannot be compatible with the demands of global egalitarianism. In this essay, I examine the sense in which liberal nationalism privileges compatriots, and I argue that, properly understood, the idea of partiality for compatriots in the context of liberal nationalism is not at odds with global equal concern for all persons. In particular, I argue that the three central goals and aspirations of liberal nationalism—promoting individual autonomy and cultural identity, the realization of deliberative democracy, and the aspiration for social justice within the state—do not entail or require a form of compatriot partiality that is inconsistent with the demands of global egalitarian justice.

Why does global justice as a philosophical inquiry matter? We know that the world is plainly unjust in many ways and we know that something ought to be done about this without, it seems, the need of a theory of global justice. Accordingly, philosophical inquiry into global justice comes across to some as an intellectual luxury that seems disconnected from the real world. I want to suggest, however, that philosophical inquiry into global justice is necessary if we want to address the problems of humanity. First, in some cases, a theory of global justice is needed for identifying what counts as legitimate problems of justice. Second, even in obvious cases of injustices, such as the fact of preventable extreme poverty to which we know we have an obligation to respond, we cannot know the content and the limits of these obligations and who the primary bearers of these obligations are without some theoretical guidance. However, I acknowledge that philosophical inquiry on global justice risks becoming a philosop..

It is commonly believed that people have special obligations to their compatriots that are both distinct from and stronger than the general duties they owe to individuals at large. Thus, it is often thought that these special obligations may legitimately limit what global distributive justice can demand of people, including those from well-off countries. Henceforth by special obligations, I mean specifically special obligations to com- patriots, which I will also call patriotic obligations, or patriotism for short.

Many liberals have argued that a cosmopolitan perspective on global justice follows from the basic liberal principles of justice. Yet, increasingly, it is also said that intrinsic to liberalism is a doctrine of nationalism. This raises a potential problem for the liberal defense of cosmopolitan justice as it is commonly believed that nationalism and cosmopolitanism are conflicting ideals. If this is correct, there appears to be a serious tension within liberal philosophy itself, between its cosmopolitan aspiration on the one hand, and its nationalist agenda on the other. I argue, however, that this alleged conflict between liberal nationalism and cosmopolitan liberalism disappears once we get clear on the scope and goals of cosmopolitan justice and the parameters of liberal nationalism. Liberal nationalism and cosmopolitan global justice, properly understood, are mutually compatible ideals.

ExtractI must first thank Daniel Halliday for his incisive but fair review essay of my book. Regretfully, I can only consider, and only in outline at that, some of his well-taken questions.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.A Reply to HallidayVolume 25, Issue 1KOK-CHOR TAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000544Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. A Reply to HallidayVolume 25, Issue 1KOK-CHOR TAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000544Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. A Reply to HallidayVolume 25, Issue 1KOK-CHOR TAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820812000544Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission.

I outline what I call a relational account of toleration. This relational account helps explain the apparent paradox of toleration in that it involves two competing moral stances, of acceptance and disapproval, towards the tolerated. It also helps clarify the way toleration is a normative ideal, and not a position one is forced into out of the practical need to accommodate or accept. Specifically, toleration is recommended out of respect for that which the tolerant agent also disapproves of. This combination of respect entangled with disapproval results from two different evaluative perspectives of the tolerant agent. The relational account explains how an agent can hold these competing evaluative perspectives. I also discuss the proper scope of state toleration under this relational account.

How should a liberal state respond to a nonliberal state that is however a decent society? By “decent,” I mean, adopting John Rawls’s terminology, that the so described state is nonaggressive and recognizes the independence and equality of other states and that it also honors basic human rights. Should a liberal state tolerate such a nonliberal state? We can identify two possible conceptions of global toleration in this regard. One conception holds that liberal states ought to tolerate nonliberal states; the second holds that liberal states ought not to tolerate nonliberal states. For convenience, I will call these the “internationalist” and “cosmopolitan” conceptions of global toleration, respectively. In this discussion, I attempt to analyze this dispute over global liberal toleration more basically in terms of two different views of liberalism and of the value of liberal toleration, which we may label “toleration-liberalism” and “autonomy-liberalism”. These different understandings of liberal toleration tend towards one or the other ideal of liberal global toleration. Then, in support of the cosmopolitan ideal, I will note certain advantages of autonomy-liberalism over toleration-liberalism.

The cosmopolitan idea of justice is commonly accused of not taking seriously the special ties and commitments of nationality and patriotism. This is because the ideal of impartial egalitarianism, which is central to the cosmopolitan view, seems to be directly opposed to the moral partiality inherent to nationalism and patriotism. In this book, Kok-Chor Tan argues that cosmopolitan justice, properly understood, can accommodate and appreciate nationalist and patriotic commitments, setting limits for these commitments without denying their moral significance. This book offers a defense of cosmopolitan justice against the charge that it denies the values that ordinarily matter to people, and a defence of nationalism and patriotism against the charge that these morally partial ideals are fundamentally inconsistent with the obligations of global justice. Accessible and persuasive, this book will have broad appeal to political theorists and moral philosophers.

IntroductionThe various special concerns and commitments that individuals ordinarily have, for example towards family members, friends, and possibly compatriots, present an interesting challenge for justice. Justice, after all, is said to be blind and imposes demands on persons that ought to be impartial, at least in some respects, to personal ties and relationships. Yet individual special concerns are obviously of moral importance and are deeply valued by participants in these relationships. Thus any conception of justice to be plausible has to be able to accommodate to some extent the various types of valuable and valued special concern characteristic of ordinary social life. In particular, it is important to see how the impartial demands of justice can be maintained while accommodating special concern.

In his stimulating and provocative collection of essays, Globalization and Justice, Kai Nielsen defends a cosmopolitan account of global justice. On the cosmopolitan view, as Nielsen understands it, individuals are entitled to equal consideration regardless of citizenship or nationality and global institutions should be arranged in such a way that each person's interest is given equal consideration. Nielsen's defense of cosmopolitan justice in this collection will be of no surprise to readers familiar with his socialist egalitarian commitments. Indeed, the internationalism underlying socialism, Nielsen would argue, naturally entails the cosmopolitan account of justice