Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-16T22:27:53.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Humanitarian intervention and the case for natural duty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2010

Richard Vernon
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
Get access

Summary

We are far from done, however, with the idea that the solution to the issues discussed in this book is to be found in a direct appeal to cosmopolitan “natural duty,” an appeal that would make any contractualist apparatus (however understood) redundant. That idea finds very strong support. Martha Nussbaum's view – that we must give up on the very idea of a social contract if we are to make sense of our obligations other than to citizens – has already been mentioned above. Jeremy Waldron has proposed that the “special duties” of citizenship are best explained as derivatives of natural duty, as necessary (not contractual) implications of justice–promoting arrangements. Allen Buchanan – one of whose proposals will be examined at length below – argues that only an appeal to a strong “natural duty of justice” can justify one society's coming to the aid of another, and that contractualism implies moral isolationism. But perhaps the most basic case for a direct appeal to natural duty is offered by Liam Murphy in his critique of Rawls. Rawls maintains that we have a natural duty of justice only in relation to associative requirements that “apply to” us. Given that we are part of an institution (a state) that issues binding requirements upon us, we have a duty to assess the justice of its requirements.

Type
Chapter
Information
Cosmopolitan Regard
Political Membership and Global Justice
, pp. 117 - 142
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×