Kok-Chor Tan

Like Thomas Hobbes, the ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi imagines a human state of nature that is chaotic and violent, akin to Hobbes’s state of war of everyone against everyone. Like Hobbes, Xunzi pins this miserable human natural condition on the egoistical nature of people. And like Hobbes, Xunzi justifies the establishment of political authority because it brings order and peace among people. But while Hobbes takes the establishment and enforcement of positive laws by an all-powerful political authority to be sufficient for keeping the state of nature at bay, Xunzi believes that positive laws alone are inadequate. Laws must be accompanied by a reformation of human nature if a well-ordered society is to be achieved and sustained. In contrast to Hobbes, then, Xunzi thinks that a well-ordered political society must have both good laws and good people. This is where the Confucian ideal of rituals comes in. Rituals have the important function of making people better in spite of their original bad nature that laws alone do not. Recalling the place of rituals in Xunzi’s ideal of a well-ordered society draws our attention to a crucial difference between Xunzi’s and Hobbes’s political philosophies. While Hobbes thinks that a peaceful political society among egotistical individuals is achievable so long as it is possible to secure the right incentive structure for them to cooperate, Xunzi thinks a stable civil order must take on the task of improving human nature. More basically, Xunzi and Hobbes see the aims of political society differently. For Hobbes, the chief purpose of politics is the peaceful co-existence of people in spite of their egoistical nature. For Xunzi, the central aim of politics is not just peaceful co-existence among individuals but their moral self-improvement and cultivation, their transformation from egoistical to social beings.

Assuming an international commitment to intervene in severe and urgent humanitarian emergencies, as expressed by the doctrine ‘The Responsibility to Protect’, I discuss two objections that the duty to intervene is nonetheless a duty that is easily limited by other moral considerations. One objection is that this duty will exceed the reasonable limits of any obligation given the high personal cost of intervention. The other objection is that any duty to intervene will be an imperfect duty, and therefore not a duty that is ascribed to and demandable of any specific actor. I will argue that these objections do not undermine the principle of the responsibility to protect.

On what we may call the institutional approach to justice, the most important duty of justice that individuals have is the duty to establish just institutions when they are absent. How should we understand this institutional duty in relation to more personal moral actions, such as taking direct personal action to mitigate institutional failures? Is this institutional duty a necessary responsibility of justice? Is it sufficient? I will discuss this question in the context of climate change: what responsibilities of justice do individual actors have when their state is not complying with an ideal of just emissions? Do they have the duty to do what they reasonably can to reduce their personal direct emissions, perhaps even picking up the slack of non-compliers? Or is their duty of justice primarily that of doing their part to establish a just regulatory framework? I will examine some options of personal responsibility in response to climate change and argue that the most important duty is that of working to bring about better institutions. Taking direct personal action can be helpful, but not when they distract us from working towards institutional reform.