"The accident of where one is born is just that, an accident; any human being might have been born in any nation"
Martha Nussbaum, 'Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism' in For Love of Country (Beacon Press, 2002)

Friday 7 March 2008

Recent Debate in Global Justice

The most influential debate in the global justice literature in the last few years has been taking place in the pages of Philosophy and Public Affairs. It was sparked by Thomas Nagel's 'The Problem of Global Justice' (2005). Subsequent additions to the debate include A. J. Julius's 'Nagel's Atlas' (2006), Andrea Sangiovanni's 'Global Justice, Reciprocity, and the State' (2007), Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel's 'Extra Rempublicam Nulla Justia?' (2006), and Arash Abizadeh's 'Cooperation, Pervasive Impact, and Coercion: On the Scope (not Site) of Distributive Justice' (2007).
It's is now pretty much impossible to write on global distributive justice without referring to the discussion that has taken place in these papers. Given that, I'm planning on re-reading each of these papers and posting about them weekly on this blog. I predict that much of my discussion will centre on the way in which the debate has been framed (which I partially disagree with). I'll start next week with Nagel's paper.

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