A DEFENCE OF A MINIMALIST ACCOUNT OF COSMOPOLITAN JUSTICE

Cosmopolitan justice, the view that justice is a universal idea that should apply to all persons irrespective of nationality has generated a lot of debate among political philosophers. Earlier studies have conceived of justice either as a territorially-bounded concept or as a trans-territorial idea, which must apply globally but failed to provide a trans-culturally persuasive account of justice that would form the basis for regulating transnational relations. This study, therefore, developed an account of cosmopolitan justice founded on the minimum requirement of non-harm that would provide a trans culturally persuasive basis for regulating relations among nations. The study adopted aspects of Kant‟s categorical imperative which emphasised respect for persons as framework. Eight major texts on political philosophy and moral philosophy including Miller‟s On Nationality (ON), Beitz‟s Political Theory and International Relations (PTIR), Jone‟s Global Justice (GJ) and Pogge‟s World Poverty and Human Rights (WPHR), O‟Neill‟s Bounds of justice (BJ), Kant‟s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (GMM), Norman‟s The Moral Philosophers(MP) and Singer‟s Practical Ethics (PE) were purposively selected. These works dealt extensively with the question of the proper scope of justice. Conceptual analysis was used to clarify key concepts such as justice, minimalism and non-harm while the critical method was employed to examine earlier approaches to trans-national understanding of justice and to develop a minimalist account of cosmopolitan justice.