This paper considers the UN efforts to introduce a legally binding Treaty on corporate accountability for human rights impacts in the context of other proposed legislation at country level, on the one hand, and existing voluntary initiatives like the UN Guiding Principles (2011), on the other. What we are interested in is whether the proposed Treaty signals a transition from voluntary initiatives (based on moral commitments) to law (that is, a focus on compliance), and the extent to which it might (...) stimulate or hinder links between judicial and non-judicial initiatives. The scholars who have explicitly addressed these two divides are – Michael Sandel, on theory v. practice; and Amartya Sen, on law v. morality. We engage with their views, in sections II and III respectively, seeking to build an integrated approach to help us overcome these dualisms. We further consider John Ruggie’s “principled pragmatism”, a strategy that he uses to build the Protect, Respect and Remedy (henceforth, PRR) Framework; and we invoke arguments from casuistry as well as a practice-focused deontology (Thomas Donaldson’s) in favour of an ethics ‘beyond cognition’, which we consider better suited than either utilitarian or principle-based theories to guide the debate on human rights. This is because it allows us to take non-rational factors into account (such as emotions and personal affiliations), when judging the kind of common good we consider worth pursuing. In the last section of the paper, we investigate whether and how might the Treaty illustrate the two divides, trying to (a) distinguish between purely legal elements and those of a wider nature, to do with morality; and (b) understand what might help bridge the gap between theoretical commitments to the universality of human rights and various practical challenges. Our aim is not to evaluate the Treaty, from a legal viewpoint, or suggest improvements to it (lawyers are better placed to do that); rather, we seek to investigate the way in which the proposed Treaty – which is the first attempt to address the challenge of transnational business and human rights in international law – combines moral and legal aspects, and what this tells us about the world we live in. (shrink)

This book focuses on the role of philosophy across disciples. It gives several examples of how philosophical theories or particular concepts or lines of arguments, can be used in other (non-philosophical) disciplines, such as politics, business, psychology, art, and film studies.

As its title is meant to suggest, this paper is a reply to Sir Tim Lankester’s article “International Aid: Experience, Prospects and the Moral Case”, published in the World Economics last year 1 . Therefore, I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude for the author’s responsiveness to my interest and queries in the area of development economics. The main point of Sir Lankester’s article was, I believe, to strengthen the case for international aid by showing first, that it (...) was not just a theoretical matter 2 and second, that its efficiency was not a self-evident fait accompli, but a still-to-achieve objective, entirely contingent upon human and institutional factors such as the will, interests, and past experience of donors, as well as the system of governance and existing policies from the recipient countries. Moreover, the human factor is actually two-fold, in the sense that one can focus either on the external part engaged in the aid mission – the donor –, or on the internal one – the recipient. Sir Tim Lankester looks into what motivates the former, whereas I intend to unpack the life-experience of the latter, for I strongly believe that what ultimately decides the success or failure of development projects has more to do with understanding their life situation, than with the actual quantum of aid. Although the two cases grounded on the above-mentioned claims may seem completely separated in Tim Lankester’s article for he allocates distinct sections to them, I have reasons to believe that they are not only inter-connected, but also deeply inter-dependent, which is crucial for the kind of existentialist scenario that I intend to outline here. In order to prove this, I am going to combine two sets of argumentative tools: one will be logical, the other – empirical. The former will help us address the issues at stake in Tim Lankester’s moral case, and find ways of strengthening it; the latter will help reminding the real goal of this attempt – which is to improve the prospects of aid missions in real-life scenarios, rather than in theory. The first, rather theoretical section will consist of an extended analysis of the moral case that Sir Lankester started to build. The focus will be not only on the supposedly fruitful aspects of social justice theories, but also on their potential risks; both heroes and villains will emerge from the analysis, and new leads will be discovered. The main criterion for testing whatever findings will remain the pragmatic one: questioning their implications on the life-experiences of the poor. The other approach that I have mentioned will consist of providing a description of life in a particular community, which I have known and learnt from. In this case, the ‘empirical’ obviously means more than just the use of examples – which can be invented, or refined: it actually involves relying on a set of personal experiences and convictions, thereby testifying in – rather than just advocating – the case for aid and development projects, under discussion here. Again, the purpose will be not so much to prove that my claim has the sort of objective validity that a theoretician would normally seek to achieve, as to enforce it by whatever relevant testimonies – be them contextual, perhaps even biased; in this case, the ‘biased’ aspect consists of using an example derived from lifeexperiences in a particular developing country: my own. And it is exactly what I regard as the strength of it; indeed, I would not be writing this, had I not learnt that lesson. (shrink)