The Scope of Justice and Global Dark Oppression

29 Pages Posted: 5 Oct 2009 Last revised: 21 Mar 2010

See all articles by T. J. Donahue

T. J. Donahue

Institute for Philosophical Research, UNAM

Date Written: March 18, 2010

Abstract

According to recent associative accounts of the scope of principles of justice, one owes duties of robust distributive justice to all those, but only those, with whom one is linked in a political association. On the Coercion Account, you owe duties of robust distributive justice only to those people who are under the same coercive authority as you are. On the Cooperation Account, you owe such duties only to those with whom you are cooperating in a joint venture. These accounts are taken to deny that the principles of distributive justice are global in scope. This paper argues that these associative accounts in fact imply that justice is global in scope. I begin by showing that there exists a worldwide political system we may call “global Dark oppression,” a condition in which all people whom global society classes as black, brown, or red are systematically harmed and exploited by the current world order. If so, I argue, then there exists the kind of global political association which the Coercion and Cooperation Accounts claim is necessary for distributive justice to be global in scope. Global racial oppression thus guarantees that justice is global.

Keywords: Global Justice, Political Association, Oppression, Racial Domination, Global Political System

Suggested Citation

Donahue, T. J., The Scope of Justice and Global Dark Oppression (March 18, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1483241 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1483241

T. J. Donahue (Contact Author)

Institute for Philosophical Research, UNAM ( email )

Circuito Maestro Mario de la Cueva s/n
Ciudad Universitaria
Coyoacán, Mexico, Distrito Federal C.P. 04510
Mexico

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
99
Abstract Views
843
Rank
482,743
PlumX Metrics