CIAO DATE: 11/2010
Volume: 23, Issue: 4
Winter 2009
Yitzhak Benbaji
This symposium is comprised of three key articles from a 2008 conference to honor Michael Walzer. Each article discusses one of the most fundamental aspects of Walzer's philosophy: the moral significance of statehood.
The Moral Standing of States Revisited [Abstract] (PDF)
Charles R. Beitz
"The Moral Standing of States" is the title of an essay Michael Walzer wrote in response to four critics of the theory of nonintervention defended in Just and Unjust Wars. It states a theme to which he has returned in subsequent work. I offer four sets of comments. First, by way of introduction, I describe the controversy between Walzer and his critics and try to identify the central point of contention. Second, I make some observations about the wider conception of global justice suggested by Walzer's remarks, emphasizing the extent of the difference between this conception and the traditional view of a "society of states" to which it stands as an alternative. The central value in Walzer's conception is collective self-determination, so I comment about its meaning and importance. Finally, I consider whether and how concerns about the moral standing of states bear on the kinds of cases of humanitarian intervention that the world community has actually faced since the book and article were written, particularly since the end of the cold war.
A Few Words on Mill, Walzer, and Nonintervention [Abstract] (PDF)
Michael W. Doyle
Nonintervention has been a particularly important and occasionally disturbing principle for liberal scholars, such as John Stuart Mill and Michael Walzer, who share a commitment to basic and universal human rights. On the one hand, liberals have provided some of the strongest reasons to abide by a strict form of the nonintervention doctrine. It was only with the security of national borders that peoples could work out the capacity to govern themselves as free citizens. On the other hand, those very same principles of universal human dignity when applied in different contexts have provided justifications for overriding or disregarding the principle of nonintervention. In explaining this dual logic I present an interpretive summary of Mill's famous argument against and for intervention, presented in his "A Few Words on Non-Intervention" (1859), that illustrates what makes Mill's "few words" both so attractive and alarming to us. We should be drawn to Mill's arguments because he is among the first to address the conundrums of modern intervention. The modern conscience tries simultaneously to adhere to three contradictory principles: first, the cosmopolitan, humanitarian commitment to assistance, irrespective of international borders; second, respect for the significance of communitarian, national self-determination; and, third, accommodation to the reality of international anarchy, which puts a premium on self-help national security. I stress, more than has been conventional, the consequentialist character of the ethics of both nonintervention and intervention. Comparing Mill's "Non-Intervention" and Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (1977) links two classic statements on just wars of intervention. I conclude that interventionist arguments should go beyond the three paradigmatic cases Walzer explores in Just and Unjust Wars. But while they can draw on Mill's "Non-Intervention," they need to offer a more convincing set of criteria for when such interventions are likely to do more good than harm.
Will Kymlicka
Since 1989 we have witnessed a proliferation of efforts to develop international norms of the rights of ethnocultural minorities, such as the UN's 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the Council of Europe's 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the Organization of American States' 1997 draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This activity at the level of international law is reflected in a comparable explosion of interest in minority rights among normative political theorists. In this context, Michael Walzer's work occupies an important but somewhat anomalous role. On the one hand, he was arguably the first political theorist, at least in the postwar era, to take seriously the issue of minority rights. Nonetheless, Walzer's work has had surprisingly little enduring impact on multiculturalism debates in either academic political theory or international law. One explanation for this puzzle is that Walzer's substantive discussion of minority rights seems to sit uneasily with his more foundational theory of justice, laid out in Spheres of Justice. I want to suggest a distinct (but complementary) explanation for why Walzer's work has not permeated the debate, focusing less on metaethical worries about his account of common meanings, and more on the practicalities of how he categorizes ethnic diversity. Walzer's state-differentiated but minority-undifferentiated approach simply does not connect to the governing premises of the larger academic and public debate, which treat minorities as differentiated and states as undifferentiated. I believe it is Walzer's idiosyncratic approach to categorization—more than his controversial theory of justice-as-common-meanings—which explains his relatively marginal role in the multiculturalism debate.
An Ethic of Political Reconciliation [Abstract]
Daniel Philpott
The core proposition of this article is that reconciliation, both as a process and an end state, is a concept of justice. Its animating virtue is mercy and its goal is peace. These concepts are expressed most deeply in religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The idea of justice as right relationship is also found in the contemporary restorative justice movement, an approach to criminal justice that has emerged in the past generation. For contemporary political orders addressing past war, genocide, and authoritarianism, the holistic justice of reconciliation involves not only the legal guarantee and actual practice of human rights and the laws of war but also a redress of the range of wounds that political injustices inflict. Reconciliation is achieved through a set of six political practices that seek to restore a measure of human flourishing. A secondary fruit of these practices is an increase in the legitimacy that citizens bequeath to their governing institutions or to their state's relationship with other states. The article takes a close look at two of the practices that are often thought to be at odds in addressing past injustices—punishment and forgiveness—and argues that when viewed as practices that reflect and participate in a restorative concept of justice, punishment and forgiveness become compatible in principle—with important implications for the politics of facing past evil.
In Pursuit of Peace [Abstract]
Kent J. Kille
Traditional international relations scholarship has stressed the place of war and conflict in the world, but it has not provided deep theoretical consideration of the concept of peace. While the focus of each of the three books discussed here differs, they share a common goal: to better place "peace" into the study of international affairs. Editors Pierre Allan and Alexis Keller ask succinctly What Is a Just Peace?, stressing how the limited conceptual consideration of just peace in comparison to discussions of just war demonstrates the pressing need to address this question. David Cortright, meanwhile, through a detailed examination of both the history of peace movements and core themes connected to the study of peace, aims to provide a defense of the place of peace and the role of pacifism in global affairs. For his part, Oliver Richmond takes international relations theory to task for not providing much-needed critical evaluation and conceptual development of peace. Richmond addresses the failure of international relations theory to fully and properly address peace, arguing that instead "concepts of peace should be a cornerstone of IR interdisciplinary investigation of international politics and everyday life" (p. 7). The first part of his book reviews and critiques the main theoretical approaches in international relations and their versions of peace, with the first three chapters devoted to liberalism, realism, and structuralism. Richmond argues that the current mainstream approach, the liberal peace, represents a "hybridisation" (p. 13) of liberal-realist thinking based on a more pragmatic pacifist idealism.
Richard Jackson
This volume provides a fresh and engaging set of discussions, approaches, and case studies on how rules established to promote peaceful international order can instead result in conflict.
Elazar Barkan
What is the contribution of religious discourse to a productive and reconciliatory response to mass atrocities? In this wide-ranging book, scholars address the philosophical, ethical, sociological, and religious approaches to post-violence politics and societies.
"Messy Morality: The Challenge of Politics" by C. A. J. Coady [Full Text]
Christian Nadeau
The principal and worthwhile contribution of this book is to resituate the debate about moral realism where it belongs, in terms of its pragmatic employment and its ability to accommodate ideals and values.
Ingrid Robeyns
This book is highly recommended to anyone who wants to know what development ethics has to offer, or who wants to engage with arguments on the role of the capability approach and ideas of deliberative democracy in development ethics.
"Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference" by Brooke A. Ackerly [Full Text]
Alyssa R. Bernstein
In a book full of thought-provoking questions for theorists of human rights, Ackerly presents an "account of the normative legitimacy of human rights" that is distinctive in several respects.
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.