IS A FAIR WORLD POSSIBLE?
Contribution to a theory of global justice
A billion human beings living on less than a dollar a day. 270 million dead between 1990 and 2005 from the effects of extreme poverty. More than all the victims of twentieth century wars. 18 million deaths a year, one third of global annual death rate, are down to destitution.
These figures effectively match the widening gap between northern and southern countries. So should richer states go about remedying the situation in poorer states, and if so, exactly how?
This question, now called the issue of “global justice”, was added to the perennial question of inequality in the late 1970s.
What would be the global analogies of social policies within a given society? If we accept that richer countries should contribute to the development of poorer states, should it be done by apportioning funding or by giving the poorer states the wherewithal to change their own future?
Contemporary theories, from that of John Rawls onwards, have each come up with their own stance on this issue. This book aims to analyse and discuss the different possible options.
The hypothesis that runs throughout this book’s trajectory explores whether practices relating to global justice – when they take the form of aid or transfer of skills to poorer nations – shouldn’t first and foremost be rooted in ethical commitments. Surely concerted actions that are likely to favour development would benefit from clarifying their status by identifying themselves as policies based less on recognition of rights than on worthwhile choices made by the international community?
Alain Renaut is a professor of political and ethical philosophy at the Sorbonne. He also runs a course in global justice at the Sciences Po school of political science. He upholds and promotes the concept of applied political philosophy. He has written some thirty books, including Qu’est-ce qu’une politique juste ? (Grasset, 2004), Un humanisme de la diversité. Essai sur la décolonisation des identités (Flammarion, 2009) and Quelle éthique pour nos démocraties ? (Buchet-Chastel, 2011).
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