Global Justice: Defending Cosmopolitanism - Tapa dura

What obligations do the world's wealthy people have to ensure that the world's poor achieve a quality of life that is recognisably human? This is the fundamental question of international distributive justice. The author outlines and analyses the relative merits of the core moral perspectives framing the debates, including the universalist, nationalist, patriotism and relativist. The author then goes on to answer the nationalist, patriotic, relativist, and constitutive challenges to moral universalism by defending a commitment to basic human rights, arguing a moral case for change in the current international system. Charles Jones argues that a form on cosmopolitanism, based on the notion of universal basic human rights, is the most philosophically and morally convincing argument.

Charles Jones is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.