Overview

What obligations do the world's wealthy people have to ensure that the world's poor achieve a quality of life that is recognizably human? This is the fundamental question of international distributive justice, and surprisingly a question that has been the subject of serious debate only in the past three decades. Charles Jones outlines and evaluates the main competing moral perspectives framing these debates, assessing the relative merits of the utilitarian, human rights, and neo-Kantian perspectives before answering the nationalist, patriotic, relativist, and constitutivist challenges to moral universalism. Jones defends a form of cosmopolitanism involving a commitment to basic human rights, and provides both a guide to the state of the art in disputes about global justice, and a distinctive defense of the moral case for change in the international system.

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9780199242221

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Reviews

Throughout a long, intricate and often ingenious argument, Jones steers his preferred version of cosmopolitanism through the many thickets and marshes of current philosophical debate ... The chosen construction has the advantage of delivering relatively self-contained discussions of each topic, making this book potentially useful as an academic text. Ethics A well-argued and effective defence of a plausible, though demanding, position about our duties of justice in global society. Canadian Journal of Political Science Charles Jones provides the best overview of the Anglo-American version of this debate currently available; he sets out all the main positions with great clarity, and develops his own ideas ... this is a very fine book ... an excellent book, and one that Oxford ought to get into paperback as quickly as possible because there is strong student demand for an overview of this kind. Journal of International Studies An important contribution to the literature ... Exciting new arguments concerning the structure of rights based theories and the problems ... a scholarly and insightful argument. Political Studies

Author Information

Charles Jones, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Western Ontario, Canada

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