The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism

In a period of rapid internationalization of trade and increased labor mobility, is it relevant for nations to think about their moral obligations to others? Do national boundaries have fundamental moral significance, or do we have moral obligations to foreigners that are equal to our obligations to our compatriots? The latter position is known as cosmopolitanism, and this volume brings together a number of distinguished political philosophers and theorists to explore cosmopolitanism: what it is, and the positive case which can be made for it. Their essays provide a comprehensive overview of both the current state of the debate and the different visions of cosmopolitanism with which we can move forward, and will interest a wide range of readers in philosophy, political theory, and law.

GILLIAN BROCK is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Auckland.

HARRY BRIGHOUSE is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Education Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF COSMOPOLITANISM

EDITED BY

GILLIAN BROCK

University of Auckland

AND

HARRY BRIGHOUSE

University of Wisconsin, Madison

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© G. Brock and H. Brighouse 2005

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First published 2005

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ISBN-13 978-0-521-84660-8 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-84660-9 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-60909-8 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-60909-7 paperback

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Contents

Contributors

Preface

Trade has internationalized rapidly and labor mobility has increased significantly since the end of the Cold War. These developments have sharply raised questions about the moral significance of national boundaries. What obligations do citizens of wealthy countries have toward the citizens of poorer countries? Are they entitled to restrict the entry of immigrant labor, and if so in what ways? Are they entitled to restrict the exit of capital? Do wealthy citizens of wealthy countries owe more to their less advantaged compatriots than to foreigners who are even poorer? Political theorists have started to address these and related issues. They fall into two broad camps: those who consider national boundaries to have fundamental moral significance, and those who consider them to have no, or only derivative, moral significance. We observed that the latter camp, which we think of as committed to cosmopolitanism, had done a great deal of work countering the claims of nationality, but much less work elaborating the detail of, and defending, a distinctively cosmopolitan political theory. So we asked a number of political theorists whose work embodied a cosmopolitan perspective to write essays contributing to the task of defending a positive political philosophy of cosmopolitanism. This anthology is the result.

Most of the contributions were written specifically for this collection. However, in four cases, some material originally appeared elsewhere. The contributions by Hillel Steiner, Allen Buchanan, Richard Miller, and Martha Nussbaum contain previously published work, and we are grateful both to the authors and the publishers of the original pieces for permission to reprint that material here. Hillel Steiner's essay is a revised version of “Liberalism and nationalism” which originally appeared in Analyse and Kritik, 17 (1995), pp. 12–20. Allen Buchanan's chapter contains material that was previously published in “Beyond the national interest” Philosophical Topics, 30 (2002), pp. 97–131. Richard Miller's chapter, “Cosmopolitan respect and patriotic concern” was originally published in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 27 (1998) pp. 202–24. Martha Nussbaum's chapter reproduces and revises material from “Beyond the Social Contract: capabilities and global justice. An Olaf Palme Lecture delivered in Oxford on 19 June 2003” by Martha C. Nussbaum Oxford Development Studies, 32 (2004), pp. 3–18. Permission to reprint this last piece has been granted from the original source on condition that we insert a reference to the journal's web site, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.

We are very grateful to all the authors, especially for their enthusiasm and energy for the project. Thanks also go to Shanon Daly from the University of Auckland for help in preparing the manuscript for publication. We are especially grateful to Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge University Press for being so supportive of the project, for acting promptly and professionally at every point, and for being so easy to work with. Gillian Dadd, Maureen Leach, Alison Powell, Annette Youngman, and the rest of the production team at Cambridge also deserve special thanks for their excellent work on publishing this book.