Global justice

Global justice is an issue in political philosophy arising from the concern about unfairness. It is sometimes understood as a form of internationalism. Norwegian philosopher Henrik Syse claims that global ethics and international justice in the western tradition form part of the tradition of natural law: the topic has been organised and taught within Western culture since Latin times of Middle Stoa and Cicero, and the early Christian philosophers Ambrose and Augustine. Syse states This early natural-law theorising teaching centred around the idea of a ius naturale, i.e., a system of right which is natural and as such common to all people, available to humankind as a measuring stick of right and wrong. Per the American political scientist Iris Marion Young "A widely accepted philosophical view continues to hold that the scope of obligations of justice is defined by membership in a common political community. On this account, people have obligations of justice only to other people with whom they live together under a common constitution, or whom they recognize as belonging to the same nation as themselves." English philosopher David Miller agreed, that obligations only apply to people living together or that are part of the same Nation. What we owe one another in the global context is one of the questions the global justice concept seeks to answer. There are positive and negative duties which may be in conflict with ones moral rules. Cosmopolitans, reportedly including the ancient Greek Diogenes of Sinope, have described themselves as citizens of the world. William Godwin ( Utilitarian thinker and anarchist) argued that everyone has an impartial duty to do the most good he or she can, without preference for any one human being over another. The broader political context of the debate is the longstanding conflict between local institutions: tribes against states, villages against cities, local communities against empires, or nation-states against the UN. The relative strength of the local versus the global has decreased over recorded history.