International ethics Flashcards
What is international ethics about?
IE is not concerned with explaining the world but rather with evaluating it and offering guidance about what ought to be done in moral terms.
What are the two questions that lie in the heart of this field?
1) Whether ‘outsiders’ should be treated according to the same principles as insiders, as moral equals.
2) Examines what treating outsiders as equals might mean in substantive terms.
What traditions of reasoning are drawn upon in international ethics?
Analytical philosophy, specifically deontological and consequentialist approaches to ethics and especially Kantianism and utilitarianism.
Deonotological approaches spell out rules that are always right for everyone to follow because they are right in themselves and not because of the consequences they may produce.
Kantian approaches emphasize rules that are right because they can be, in principle, agreed on by everyone.
Consequentialism judges actions by the desirability of their outcomes.
Utilitarianism judges acts by their expected outcomes in terms of human welfare and the ‘greatest good of the greatest number’.
What are continental philosophy?
An abstract decontextualized method which seeks to identify moral rules independet of the values of any particular way of life or perspective. Continental approaches are skeptical of abstract universialism.
What does a poststructuralist think of universialism, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism, as well as taht of statism and the state?
They are skeptical about it. They think they justify further domination. Although cosmopolitanism invokes a universal humanity, they argue that it is not universal but a reflection of western, liberal enlightenment ideas.
They argue that concept such as humanity and humanitarianism are used to justify wars and unequal treatments of non-western others.
What does cosmopolitanism, deontologists and utilitarians argue about the moral code?
What does communitarians argue about it?
Cosmopolitianism, deontologists, and utilitarianism holds that the moral code is universal and applicable to everyone: because what defines us morally is our humanity.
Communitarians argue that morality is derived from the values of particular communities and is therefore necessarily particular, not universal.
With the advent of globalization, the question becomes whether we should see the people of earth as one community with one moral code, or as a collection of different communities with different moral codes.
explain Kan’ts principle of the categorical imperative.
It was his project of perpetual peace between states. It means that humans should be treated as ends in themselves.
The argument is that treating people as ends in themselves requires us to think universally. National borders are morally irrelevant. it recognizes every individuals moral standing.
What is the distinction between moral and institutional cosmopolitanism?
The first refers to the acts required of individuals, and the second to the rules that govern societies. Cosmopolitan duties to recognize individual equality apply to individuals as well as to the global institutional/legal order.
What is the distinction between positive and negative duties?
Positive duties are duties to act, which may include duties to create a just social order, or duties of assistance (beneficence, mutual aid, humanitarian acts,) The idea of a positive duty underlines the idea of the responsibility to protect.
Negative duties are duties to stop or avoid doing something, usually to avoid unnecessarily harming others.(non-intervention).
A negative duty to cease harming implies only a cessation of action; however some think there should be a positive duty to prevent other harms occurring, as well as duties of compensation or redress. (global poverty)
Linklater argues that it helps to think about cosmopolitanism in three ways, what are these?
1) bilateral relationships: what ‘we’ do to ‘them’ and vice versa. 2) Third-party relationships; what they do to each other. 3) Global relationships: what we all do to each other.
what is statism?
the view that states provide the boundaries of our moral concern and are ethichal agents in their own right.
What does ‘thick’ cosmopolitanism emphasize?
it emphasize extensive positive (ie. justie and aid) and negative (ie. non-harming) duties across borders and theses duties dominate discussion of global distributive justice.
It emphasize institutional duties and envision a radically transformed global order in which states all states conform to global justice.
What does ‘thin’ cosmopolitanism (or statism) emphasize?
They argue that people have at most only minimal duties not to harm, to aid in case of emergency, and to help uphold minimal human rights standards.
They usually defend the state as a means to realize national and communal self-determination and autonomy.
How does realists view morality in this regard?
the only viable ethics are those of self-interest and survival. Self-help is a moral duty and not just a practical necessity. Even if it is to bomb a neutral country.
How are realists vulnerable in their reasoning on morality?
Not every choice that states face is between survival and destruction, rather than, say advantage or disadvantage. It does not stand to reason that seeking advantage allow the statesperson to opt out of conventional morality in the same way that survival might.
