War and Global Public Reason

Utilitas 29 (4):398-422 (2017)
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Abstract

This paper offers a new critical evaluation of the Rawlsian model of global public reason (‘GPR’), focusing on its ability to serve as a normative standard for guiding international diplomacy and deliberation in matters of war. My thesis is that, where war is concerned, the model manifests two fatal weaknesses. First, because it demands extensive neutrality over the moral status of persons – and in particular over whether they possess equal basic worth or value – out of respect for the beliefs of inegalitarian yet ‘decent’ societies, or ‘peoples’, Rawlsian GPR renders calculations of proportionality in war impossible. Second, because its content is provided by a conception of global justice (the so-called ‘Law of Peoples’) whose injunctions are addressed exclusively to peoples, as corporate agents, Rawlsian GPR pushes the moral evaluation of the independent wartime choices of individuals off the agenda of the global public forum altogether.

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Jeremy Williams
University of Birmingham

Citations of this work

Public Reason.Jonathan Quong - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Global Public Reason, Diversity, and Consent.Samuel Director - 2019 - Philosophical Papers 48 (1):31-57.
Global public reason: too thick or too thin.Maximillian Afnan - forthcoming - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

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References found in this work

The Law of Peoples.John Rawls - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 51 (203):246-253.
Why Rawls is Not a Cosmopolitan Egalitarian.Leif Wenar - 2006-01-01 - In Rex Martin & David A. Reidy (eds.), Rawls's Law of Peoples. Blackwell. pp. 95–113.
The completeness of public reason.Micah Schwartzman - 2004 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 3 (2):191-220.
Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on Epistemology and Political Theory.David Estlund - 1996 - Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 59 (3):821-825.
Rawls, reasonableness, and international toleration.Thomas Porter - 2012 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 11 (4):382-414.

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