PY 4818: Kantianism and Global Justice

C.I.: "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law". 

Respect for persons as rational autonomous agents involves acting only in ways that each person could reasonably agree to. 

If a principle of action could not be adopted by everyone, it is impermissible to act on it.  OπNeill: "Obligations are a matter of refraining from action whose fundamental principles others cannot share".

Kantian Contractualism:

The test of whether a set of laws and social institutions are just is whether each person could reasonably agree to them.

According to Rawls, the way we ensure impartiality is by adopting the veil of ignorance – the original position.

The case for the global scope of just laws:

At the foundation for the Kantian account of justice is respect for persons as rational autonomous agents.

This is a trait that is universally shared.

Therefore the original position ought to be applied globally.

OπNeillπs account of Kantian Moral Theory:

Two developments of the traditional Kantian approach:

1. She emphasises the physical and psychological vulnerability of human beings.  We require food etc in order to engage in rational autonomous activity.
2. The CI test should be applied to institutions, trans-national corporations etc, and not just individual conduct.

She endorses Kantπs original claim that obligations of justice are negative.

Negative obligations (duties not to coerce etc) are perfect: there are no circumstances in which agents are permitted to fail to act upon them.

Test: contradiction in conception.  We cannot conceive of a world in which acting on the maxim is universalised.  

Perfect duties correspond to rights, and so are duties of justice.

Positive obligations (duties of aid) are imperfect: we ought to perform actions at least some of the time for some others.

Test: contradiction in the will.  We run into contradiction when we attempt to will that everyone act on the maxim.  (To will something is to commit oneself to taking the necessary means to bringing it about.)

Imperfect duties do not correspond to rights, and are duties of beneficence rather than justice.

OπNeillπs argument against welfare rights:

Claim rights entail corresponding duties.

For a right to be genuine, the right-holder must be able to specify the agent(s) responsible for respecting and fulfilling the right, and the precise content of that obligation.  OπNeill: I only genuinely have a right if ≥others if ≥others have an obligation to respect or fulfil that right.  If nobody has such obligations, there just is no right at all≤ (p. 93). 

Negative rights (rights not to be coerced, assaulted, etc) impose negative duties.

Every agent can reasonably be expected to fulfil negative duties, since this requires only refraining from acting in various ways.  We can all refrain from harming anyone.

Therefore in the case of negative rights (i.e. rights that, she holds, impose negative duties), it is easy to specify the agents responsible for respecting or fulfilling the right: everyone.

By contrast, alleged welfare rights impose positive obligations.

These positive obligations cannot be universal, since they require expenditure of time and resources; we cannot all help every destitute individual.

Rather, the duties of aid are imperfect: each agent has a duty to help at least some destitute persons, at least some of the time; the agent has discretion over which destitute persons to help.

This means that for any one particular destitute person, it is not the case that any particular agent has an obligation to help them. 

The destitute person therefore does not have a claim against any specified agent to be helped, and therefore cannot be said to have a right to be helped.

Responses to OπNeillπs critique of welfare rights:

1. We can specify the obligation bearers.

A universal right to food doesnπt require that every agent is under an obligation to help every destitute person.

It just requires that all the duties that need to be fulfilled in order to ensure that all the rights are protected be allocated.

An account can be given of the agents and agencies with the counterpart obligations. 

2. An adequate rights-based approach requires finding duty-bearers to protect rights, given the correlativity of rights and duties.

3. Given the importance of the need for basic necessities (for autonomous action etc), it is insufficient to just hold that individuals and collective agents have obligations to meet only some of the needs of some others and only some of the time.

4. Jones questions her division of rights into positive and negative.

Jones: every kind of right, including the right not to be assaulted, imposes positive duties of protection (cf Shue).

5. OπNeill accepts that each individual has a right not to be coerced.

But if persons lack access to basic necessities, they are extremely vulnerable to coercion.

Therefore the right not to be coerced entails a right to basic necessities.