Replying to the objection “

Before directly responding to the aforementioned objection, allow me a preliminary remark. Let me start by saying that I believe value collectivism to be an implausible view. More to the point for our present concern, I believe that there is no reason to attribute value collectivism to Rawls. But to reject value collectivism, and thus to en- dorse normative individualism, does not require rejecting the moral significance of collectives altogether. Within normative individualism there is logical space to de- fend the moral significance of groups and collective entities. Crudely put, the idea that groups are important to the well-being (broadly construed) of their members makes it possible to attribute to such groups moral significance without necessari- ly endorsing the value collectivist position. For instance, according to some liberal

nationalists, it is precisely the contribution that nations can and do make to the life of persons that provides the justification of their moral significance (see Miller, 1995; Tamir, 1993). In other words, there is a difference between recognizing the moral significance of a collective and the grounds or justification of such moral significance. Once this distinction is in place it is then possible to see that what really matters for normative individualists should not be whether certain collective entities can have moral significance, but how such moral significance is justified – that is, whether such moral significance is derivative or dependent on the contribution that the collective entity can make to the life of individuals. This is instructive as it signals that there is not much we can conclude simply acknowledging the fact that LP is framed in terms of peoples rather than persons. What we need to know is ‘why’ LP is framed the way it is.

In chapter 1, I have insisted that LP cannot be presented as theory of international politics that starts with collective agents simply for the sake of methodological con- siderations. As I have stated there, we need a way of picturing LP that is capable of justifying its very unit of analysis, namely peoples, as the result of the liberal idea that social and political arrangements should be justifiable to the persons that are subject to them. Furthermore, in chapter 2, I have claimed that to start with the pub- lic political culture of a given political context is the mark of a peculiar liberal strat- egy, one that is grounded in respect for persons and its associated requirement of public justification. Finally, in part 2 of this chapter, I have claimed that it is by in- terpreting the global public political culture that Rawls chooses peoples as the main unit for his theory. More precisely, following Leif Wenar, I have claimed that the glob- al public political culture is not able to tell us how individuals should relate to each other. On the other hand the global public political culture is more robust when it comes to the mutual undertakings of political communities. I thus concluded that this is the reason why Rawls decided to start with peoples rather than persons.

With the three elements of my analysis of LP so far we have, I believe, good rea- son to picture LP as a form of normative individualism. LP begins with the idea of respect for persons and its associated requirement of public justification. The only way in which the requirement of public justification can be carried out is to start from the public political culture of the political context LP is examining, namely the glob- al public political culture. The global public political does not refer to the idea of ‘free’ and ‘equal’ citizens, nor does it imagine the persons of the world as engaged in a fair system of social cooperation. That is to say, the global public political culture can- not really support the extension of the content of Justice as Fairness to global poli- tics. not only that, the global public political culture does not seem to provide much guidance on how persons should relate toward one another. The closest thing we can find to a sharable characterization of persons at the global level is the idea that per- sons are members of distinct political societies. As such, they are plausibly attached to the idea that their political communities are free and independent. Of course, this will not entail that this freedom and independence are absolute, since in the glob- al public political culture there is a clear sense that for membership in political com- munities to be meaningful, certain basic human rights cannot be violated.

One way of incorporating these ideas in a conception of justice for global poli- tics is to use political communities as the basic unit of analysis. Political communi- ties will have to be pictured as free and independent and their power of sovereign- ty will have to be limited. We can call these political communities ‘peoples’ (rather than states) to mark these special features. not only can the choice of peoples as the basic unit of analysis be able to incorporate the few elements that a sharable con- ception of the person at the global level would contain, but it can also capture a rich- er set of obligations that are traditionally seen as part of the domain of international relations, that is, of relations between political communities. Such obligations per- tain to the idea of a fair international economic system; for example, to the way in which major international economic organizations and institutions are framed. Even more importantly they pertain to the limits and conduct of war between political com- munities, perhaps one of the most enduring sources of suffering in human history.

however suggestive (if at all) this interpretation might be, some may remain un- convinced of the normative individualism of LP. LP, they might claim, does care about certain fundamental human rights and does pose conditions on the internal legiti- macy of nonliberal peoples, but it does not do so because it cares about persons as such. In fact Rawls himself writes, in the concluding pages of LP, that it is concerned with the justice of societies and not with the well-being of individuals. Rawls imag- ines two societies both internally satisfying the requirements of justice as fairness, yet the worst-off in one society are faring better than the worst-off in the other. Ac- cording to Rawls:

The Law of Peoples is indifferent between the two distributions. The cosmopolitan view, on the other hand, is not indifferent. It is concerned with the well-being of individuals, and hence whether the well-being of the globally worst-off per- son can be improved. What is important to the Law of Peoples is the justice and stability for the right reasons of liberal and decent societies, living as members of a Society of well-ordered Peoples.

(LP: 120)

I am going to leave to the next section discussion of whether it is possible to present

LP as a fully cosmopolitan theory. here let me suggest that it is likely, given Rawls’

critical target in the last few pages of LP, that ‘cosmopolitan view’ might simply re- fer to Pogge and Beitz. In order to properly understand the quote we should also take note that ‘the well-being of individuals’ and ‘the justice of societies’ are clearly not in opposition. In fact it would seem rather strange to care about the justice of any given society unless one also cared, in some way, about the well-being of individu- als who are part of that society. The good of a just or decent society and the fact that its justice or decency allow it to be a member in good standing of a Society of well- ordered Peoples is that the fundamental interests of its members (their human rights and the internal legitimacy of the political institutions under which they live) are guar- anteed. no other explanation, it seems to me, is even intelligible. If the goal of Rawls’ realistic utopia is to eliminate the great evils of human history, we might well admit

that the only reason for caring about such evils is because of the great human suf- ferings that they produce. In this respect, Rawls is not, in my view, particularly help- ful in presenting the contrast between the two views as sharply as he does. Rather, the crucial distinction is once again dictated by how we want to conceive of the well- being of individuals in the first place. As I have stated above, if we can assume that in the global public political culture the idea of belonging to a self-determining po- litical community is an important one, then the way in which we understand the well- being of individuals should also take into consideration this fact. To live in one’s own just or decent society is a great good for Rawls – perhaps even a greater one than hav- ing more resources or primary goods at one’s disposal.