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Bounded morality: justice and the state in world politics

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BrownPeter G. and ShueHenry, editors, Food Policy: The Responsibility of the United States in the Life and Death Choices, New York: Free Press, 1977, 344 pages.
WalzerMichael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, New York: Basic Books, 1977, 361 pages.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Charles R. Beitz
Charles R. Beitz
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College.
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International Organization , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , Summer 1979 , pp. 405 - 424
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1979

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References

1 Wight, Martin, “Why is there no International Theory?,” in Diplomatic Investigations, Butterfield, H. and Wight, M., eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), p. 20Google Scholar.

2 See especially the essays in three most helpful collections: Wasserstrom, Richard, ed., War and Morality (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1970)Google Scholar; Cohen, Marshall, Nagel, Thomas, and Scanlon, Thomas, eds., War and Moral Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Held, Virginia, Morgenbesser, Sidney, and Nagel, Thomas, eds., Philosophy, Morality and International Affairs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

3 There is no space to consider several other recent books about political theory and international relations, but they should at least be mentioned. Gallie, W. B., Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is an exegetical and critical study of the international thought of Kant, Clausewitz, Marx, Engels and Tolstoy that succeeds in opening up some interesting problems in the interpretation of these writers. Gallie expresses his debt to Hinsley, F. H., Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1963)Google Scholar, which covers much more ground, but lacks the penetration of Gallie's study. Over the years the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics has stimulated several publications, including Butterfield and Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations. More recently, a number of papers by Martin Wight about different historical international systems has been published under the title, Systems of States (Leicester, England: Leicester University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; in an edition prepared by Bull, Hedley. Donelan, Michael, ed., The Reason of States (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978)Google Scholar, is an uneven collection of papers about various metatheoretical and normative issues. Two historical studies of the growth of international thought are: Midgley, E. B. F., The Natural Law Tradition and the Theory of International Relations (London: Paul Elek, 1975)Google Scholar, and Parkinson, F., The Philosophy of International Relations (Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications, 1977)Google Scholar. Although several of the volumes cited in this note contribute historical perspective on the development of international theory, and some are suggestive about contemporary normative problems, none displays the level of philosophical sophistication of the majority of the papers in the volumes cited in note 2.

4 Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (New York: Collier, 1962), ch. 21, p. 162Google Scholar.

5 Morgenthau, Hans J., Politics Among Nations, 5th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1973), p. 10Google Scholar. On the ambiguity of this position, see Bull, Hedley, “Society and Anarchy in International Relations,” in Diplomatic Investigations, Butterfield, and Wight, , eds., pp. 37–38Google Scholar.

6 Thompson, Kenneth W., Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 32–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 See my Political Theory.and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), part IGoogle Scholar, from which I have drawn some of the material in this section.

8 On the international jurists, see Schiffer, Walter, The Legal Community of Mankind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954)Google Scholar; and the very helpful recent study of the roots of just war theory by Johnson, James Turner, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

9 Pufendorf, Samuel, De jure naturae et gentium, libri octo, trans. , C. H. and Oldfather, W. A.. The Classics of International Law, No. 17, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), VIII, ix, p. 1338, and VIII, x, pp. 1342–43Google Scholar.

10 Kant uses this term to characterize the law of a possible universal community of nations. The Metaphysical Elements of Justice (part I of The Metaphysics of Morals), trans. Ladd, John (Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 125Google Scholar.

11 For a discussion of Grotius that makes clear the basis of this classification, see Bull, Hedley, “The Grotian Conception of International Society,” in Diplomatic Investigations, Butterfield, and Wight, , eds., pp. 51–73Google Scholar.

12 These are surveyed in Johnson, Ideology, Reason and the Limitation of War. Other recent, influential discussions are Ramsey, Paul, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: Scribner's, 1968)Google Scholar, and Taylor, Telford, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970)Google Scholar.

13 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

14 Walzer, p. xv.

15 For discussions of these approaches, see Thomas Nagel, “War and Massacre,” and Richard Brandt, “Utilitarianism and the Rules of War,” in Cohen, Nagel, and Scanlon, eds., War and Moral Responsibility. A different view has been put forward by Mavrodes, George I. in “Conventions and the Morality of War,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 4, 2 (Winter 1975): 117–31Google Scholar. Mavrodes questions whether the distinction between combatants and non-combatants can be drawn clearly enough to allow the standard arguments in favor of non-combatant immunity to be made. For a criticism of his view, see Robert K. Fullinwider, “War and Innocence,” ibid. 5, 1 (Fall 1975): 90–97.

16 Walzer, p. 268.

17 The crucial moral questions do not appear even to have been seriously raised by President Truman and his immediate advisors. See Sherwin, Martin J., A World Destroyed (New York: Vintage, 1977), especially ch. 9Google Scholar.

18 Walzer, pp. 325–26.

19 Walzer, pp. 61–63.

20 Walzer, p. 85. According to Walzer, the Israeli first strike in the Six Day War of 1967 was justified according to this revision of the paradigm (see pp. 82–85). For this he has been widely criticized; see, for example, Noam Chomsky's review of Just and Unjust Wars in Inquiry, 17 April 1978, pp. 23–27.

21 Walzer, p. 108.

22 Walzer, p. 121.

23 See, e.g., p. 108.

24 Walzer, p. 61.

25 Such a view resembles that taken by Grotius regarding humanitarian intervention, and illustrates one respect in which he is best understood as a cosmopolitan theorist. See Grotius, Hugo, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres, trans. Kelsey, Francis W.. The Classics of International Law, No. 3, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), II, xxv, sec. vi, p. 582Google Scholar.

26 Walzer, p. 54.

27 The locus classicus is Hume's, David essay, “On the Original Contract,” in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), pp. 452–73Google Scholar. A recent discussion which criticizes Locke on similar grounds is Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel, “Obligation and Consent—I,” American Political Science Review 59, 4 (12 1965): esp. 990–97Google Scholar.

28 Mill, John Stuart, “A Few Words on Non-intervention,” in Dissertations and Discussions (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1867), vol. 3, p. 175Google Scholar.

29 Walzer, p. 87. Perhaps this reasoning explains Walzer's startlingly bald remark that “A legitimate government is one that can fight its own internal wars,” p. 101.

30 Walzer, p. 101.

31 Walzer, p. 107.

32 I have tried to develop this type of view about intervention in Political Theory and International Relations, part II.

33 Mill, , “Non-intervention,” pp. 167, 176Google Scholar.

34 Vincent, R. J. presents forceful arguments to this effect in Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), ch. 9Google Scholar.

35 The relevant literature is vast, but the point is made with particular clarity in Gourevitch, Peter, “The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics,” International Organization 32, 4 (Autumn 1978): 881–912CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Gorovitz, Samuel, “Bigotry, loyalty, and malnutrition,” in Food Policy, Brown, Peter G. and Shue, Henry.eds. (New York: Free Press, 1977), p. 131Google Scholar.

37 Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 273Google Scholar.

38 Singer, Peter, “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, 3 (Spring 1972): 229–43Google Scholar.

39 Singer, Peter, “Reconsidering the famine relief argument,” in Brown and Shue, p. 37Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. I have used the “strong version” of Singer's second premise. The “weak version” is: “if we can prevent something bad from happening without sacrificing anything of moral significance, we ought to do so,” p. 37.

41 Singer, , “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” p. 241Google Scholar.

42 Nagel, Thomas, “Poverty and Food: Why charity is not enough,” in Brown and Shue, p. 54Google Scholar; the order of the phrases has been reversed.

43 Singer, in Brown and Shue, pp. 45–46.

44 Nagel, in Brown and Shue, p. 58.

45 Nagel makes such an argument in Brown and Shue. Peter Brown's contribution (“Food as national property,” pp. 63–78) reaches a somewhat narrower (but not inconsistent) conclusion by examining moral theories of ownership and showing that even theories that minimize the responsibilities that owners have to others justify some obligations to redistribute food.

46 Nagel, in Brown and Shue, p. 55.

47 In Brown and Shue, see Singer, p. 37, and Nagel, pp. 56, 59.

48 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Rawls, of course, does not consider whether his theory of distributive justice applies beyond the nation-state. For an argument that it should, see my Political Theory and International Relations, part III, where I also consider at greater length some objections like those discussed below. See also Amdur, Robert, “Rawls' Theory of Justice: Domestic and International Perspectives,” World Politics 29, 3 (04 1977): 438–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Gorovitz, in Brown and Shue, p. 136.

50 Ibid., pp. 135–36.

51 For example, a doctor would be wrong in passing by a stranger injured in an auto accident merely to keep a lunch date with a friend.

52 Singer, in Brown and Shue, p. 44.

53 Gorovitz, in Brown and Shue, p. 136.

54 Ibid., p. 131.

55 Ibid., p. 141.

56 Singer, in Brown and Shue, pp. 45–46.

57 Both possibilities are discussed in Arthur Lewis's Janeway Lectures at Princeton, published as The Evolution of the International Economic Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

58 Shue, Henry, “Distributive criteria for development assistance,” in Brown and Shue, pp. 305–18Google Scholar.

59 Ibid., p. 314.

60 Ibid., p. 317.

61 There is a discussion in Fagen, Richard, “Equity in the South in the Context of North-South Relations,” in Rich and Poor Nations in the World Economy, by Fishlow, Albert and others (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978)Google Scholar.