Julian Culp

Global justice and development

Preface and Acknowledgments 1. Introduction PART I: GLOBAL JUSTICE 2. Globalism 3. Statism 4. Transnationalism 5. Internationalism PART II: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT 6. Justice-Based Development 7. Toward Another Kind of Development Practice Notes Bibliography Index

How irresponsible are rising powers

Abstract Rising powers like Brazil, China and India have recently made significant gains in their capabilities as states. Therefore many IR scholars are claiming that these powers must now contribute more to the provision of global public goods like a clean environment, free trade and human rights. This article will argue that reasonably democratic international political discourses are another global public good whose greater supply is sorely needed and that rising powers are having a positive impact on the creation of such discourses. Thus rising powers are not behaving as irresponsibly as many IR scholars assume.

Internationalizing Nussbaum’s model of cosmopolitan democratic education

Abstract Nussbaum’s moral cosmopolitanism informs her capability-based theory of justice, which she uses in order to develop a distinctive model of cosmopolitan democratic education. I characterize Nussbaum’s educational model as a ‘statist model,’ however, because it regards cosmopolitan democratic education as necessary for realizing democratic arrangements at the domestic level. The socio-cultural diversity of virtually every nation, Nussbaum argues, renders it mandatory to educate citizens in a cosmopolitan fashion. Citizens must develop empathy and sympathy towards all co-citizens of their domestic polities and cope effectively with socio-cultural diversity. I criticize Nussbaum’s statist model, because it neglects that due to the ways in which international institutions already constrain national decision-making, citizens will not fully enjoy the human freedom of co-determining the political choices that affect their lives unless international affairs are further democratized. Therefore I suggest extending Nussbaum’s statist model and outline an ‘internationalist model’ of cosmopolitan democratic education.

Introduction: education and migration

ABSTRACT This introduction expounds educational problems that arise from transnational migration. It argues that it is high time to critically analyze normative issues of and in education under conditions of globalization because dominant approaches in normative philosophy of education tend to suffer from both a nationalist bias and a sedentary bias. The contributions to this special issue address normative problems pertaining to migration-related education from a variety of ethical and philosophical perspectives, including analytic applied ethics, continental philosophy, care ethics, Hegelian philosophy, the capability approach and theories of distributive justice. They discuss the education of both citizens and migrants in the receiving society as well as in the country of origin, focusing on ethical issues pertaining to access to education as well as to the content of educational programs.

Disaggregated pluralistic theories of global distributive justice – a critique

ABSTRACT Pluralistic theories of global distributive justice aim at justifying a plurality of principles for various subglobal contexts of distributive justice. Helena de Bres has recently proposed the class of disaggregated pluralistic theories, according to which we should refrain from defending principles that apply to the shared background conditions of such subglobal contexts. This article argues that if one does not justify how these background conditions should be regulated by principles of a just global basic structure, then the (apparent) realization of the principles that are justified for the subglobal contexts of distributive justice can erode and undermine justice over time. For example, the realization of justice in international trade might undermine climate justice, at least if climate justice requires increasing tariffs (in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions) but justice in international trade calls for reducing tariffs (in order to create a level playing field). Principles of a just global basic structure would have to ensure that such justice-eroding spillover effects from one to another context of justice do not occur. Finally, the article responds critically to de Bres’ objections that an account of a just global basic structure is too idealistic, not action guiding, and superfluous.

Against all odds: Peace education in times of crisis

Abstract Contexts of violent, intractable conflict such as those present in Israel, Nigeria, or Iraq represent times of severe crisis. Reducing the high indices of violence is very urgent, but the attempts of establishing peaceful arrangements in the short- or medium-term usually fail. Peace education, by contrast, is a long-term endeavor to resolve violent, intractable conflicts that aims at affecting moral stances that the conflicting parties take vis-à-vis each other. Unfortunately, however, peace education in times of severe crisis also faces many impediments. These impediments concern the agential, cultural, financial, and legal aspects of educative institutions within context of violent and intractable conflicts. Although these impediments strongly put into question the practice of peace education, this article shows that four reasons nevertheless strongly support this practice. These reasons refer to (1) humanity’s natural goodness, (2) the symbolic importance of peace education, (3) the peace-promoting experiences facilitated through peace education, and (4) peace education’s contribution to overcoming prejudices.

What Can we Learn from ‘Postmodern’ Critiques of Education for Autonomy?

Abstract Lyotard defines being postmodern as an ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’. Such incredulity includes, in particular, skepticism vis-à-vis Enlightenment ideals like autonomy. Motivated by such skepticism, several educational scholars put into question education for autonomy as it is practiced in the formal settings of national school systems. More specifically, they criticize that practices of autonomy education can have certain normalizing and ideological effects that undermine the aim of creating autonomous subjects. This article examines these critiques of education for autonomy and argues that they are best understood as calls for reforming educational practices, and not as outright rejections of education for autonomy. Thus, since the allegedly ‘postmodern’ critiques of autonomy education cannot be plausibly understood as radical ruptures with Enlightenment ideals, the article concludes that these critiques represent (merely) constructive self-critical reflections on what Habermas dubbed the ‘unfinished project of modernity’.

Normative reconstruction without foundation

Axel Honneth’s most recent book, Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, is an ambitious and thought-provoking work of social and political theory. Its main impetus is to provide a Hegelian reading of contemporary Western societies – and thus, so to speak, an actualisation of Hegel’s Philosophy of right. Readers of Honneth’s writings will recognise the hallmark of his previous work. He is committed, more than ever, to a Hegelian lens through which he pursues a methodology that explicitly blends normative argumentation and social theory, a method Honneth refers to as normative reconstruction. Similarly to his approach in The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflict (Honneth, 1996), Honneth (2014: 125) focuses on a single notion – this time it is freedom – through which he develops a theory of justice on the basis of an adaptation of Hegel’s three ‘ethical spheres’ (the family, the market, and the state). Carving out his position within the academic philosophical discourse, what is most striking about this book is Honneth’s explicit stance against the prevalence of Kantian and Neo-Kantian political theory, which he characterises as formal and abstract. In contrast, Honneth (2014: 3) develops a contextual theory of justice, which does not begin from purely normative principles, but instead follows Hegel by studying freedom’s ‘structural preconditions actually existing in society’. Honneth (2014: 64) sets himself the truly formidable task of ‘picking up on values and ideas already institutionalized in society . . . [and] show[ing] through normative comparison . . . that these established values are not only socially but also morally valid’. In doing so, Honneth seeks to depart from the widespread, ideal-theoretical methodology that is removed from present-day injustices; instead he aims at addressing actual social, economic, and political practices and institutions. To illustrate, consider the conclusion that Honneth (2014: 111) reaches when discussing the use of Kant’s categorical imperative and the injunction to follow a mental process of universalisation in the case of a colleague who is guilty of

G. A. Cohen, Constructivism, and the Fact of Reasonable Pluralism

Abstract In this article I argue that G.A. Cohen is mistaken in his belief that the concept of justice needs to be rescued from constructivist theorists of justice. In doing so, I rely on insights of John Rawls’ later work Political Liberalism and Rainer Forst’s discourse theory of justice. Such critical engagement with Cohen’s critique of constructivism is needed, because Cohen bases his critique of constructivism almost exclusively on Rawls’s arguments and positions in A Theory of Justice. He thus neglects - at least by and large - that Rawls had further developed his constructivist method of justification in his later work Political Liberalism, as well as that Forst’s discourse-theoretical works offer elaborate versions of constructivism. These refined versions of constructivism recognize a plurality of reasonable conceptions of ideal justice and draw an important distinction between moral and political constructivism. Because of these features these advanced constructivist theories are not in need of Cohen’s rescue.

Justice-based Development

When we use the concept of development descriptively, such as when we speak about how the previous month’s weather has developed, we tend to use terms like ‘transition’, ‘changeover’, ‘trend’, or ‘change’. These comments about development are descriptive, not evaluative. However, when we use the concept of development normatively, then we are making an evaluative statement that something has changed in a desirable or undesirable manner. For example, we may say that a company ‘made a significant development’ in order to express our positive assessment of the changes that it has undergone. In particular, when we talk in a normative sense about the development of a social arrangement, we usually refer to the idea of human or social progress (Lebret, 1960, p. 1, quoted in Goulet, 1995, p. 6; Chambers, 1997, p. vi; Dower, 2000, p. 44; Nuscheler, 2006, p. 225; Hopper, 2012, p. 3). For instance, the Human Development Report 2010 of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2010, p. 11) states explicitly that its approach to assessing development ‘is the best way of thinking about human progress’. Normative conceptions of the development of social arrangements thereby determine how one ought to conceive of human or social progress by arguing for a particular set of conditions whose fulfillment amounts to the realization of such progress.1