Jocelyne Couture

Cosmopolitanism and the compatriot priority principle

To think about morality seriously is among other things to hope that it can plausibly be made to have some reasonable form of objectivity. What form it can take (if any), and still make sense, is a deeply contested matter (Mackie, 1977). In this essay, we shall argue (1) that an objective morality should take the form of intersubjectivity best captured by the method of general and wide reflective equilibrium; (2) that such a method itself yields a conception of morality that is both (a) universalistic and cosmopolitan and (b) particularistic and contextual. We will further argue that any reasonable morality must be both (a) and (b); (3) that moving on to the domain of normative politics, a justified political morality must be a cosmopolitan morality. Moreover (or so we shall argue), a cosmopolitan morality should, where a nation’s sovereignty is threatened or not accepted, yield a liberal nationalism if it is to be a justified political stance. This raises the compatriot priority question and with it, the issue of the consistency of a liberal nationalist cosmopolitanism. We shall consider that in some detail.

Decision Theory, Individualistic Explanations and Social Darwinism

There is an important sense in which decision theory1 is not individualistic. A rational agent will choose the option whose utility, relatively to his own preferences, is the greatest. But the options over which he has to choose and the particular way their utility for him relates to other actor’s choices are both part of the context of choice. The rationality of choices, that is, their maximizing character, is then assessed for choices made in a given environment. In interpreting theories framed in a rational choice set up, such an environment will pattern a certain state of the world, a certain social environment, including economic and political contexts shaping, together with individual rationality and preferences, the very outcome of interactive choices.