Thomas Nagel’s widely recognized writings span from metaphysics and epistemology to the philosophy of mind, normative ethics, and political philosophy. Though Nagel has promoted the idea of the duty of assistance to the world’s worst off, he rejects the idea of global justice in favor of sustaining the locus of justice within states. The realization of justice for Nagel is contingent upon political solidarity, enforceable laws, and coercive institutions. As such, global justice could only be realized through a world state.

In his major work on political philosophy, Equality & Partiality (1991), Nagel argues that there are two conditions which prevent global governance in the necessary form of a coercive world state from emerging. The first is extreme diversity of values around which political communities are organized. Given that conceptions of the good, toward which political systems aim, are radically divergent throughout the world, it would be untenable to organize a world government because diverse values conflict and a coercive world state, failing in the ability to capture the core of each conception, would lack legitimacy. Furthermore, given that religious and cultural xenophobia are endemic in our world, convincing all to engage with all as equal members of a political community, irrespective of differences, would be difficult, if not impossible.

The second condition Nagel points to is radical global economic inequality. Given that the gap between the global affluent and the global poor is so extreme, leaving many billions of people in conditions of absolute deprivation, Nagel argues that the economic demands of a coercive state system would be in too strong a discord to be overcome. For the global poor, it would be reasonable to reject anything less than a revolutionary change in their economic circumstance. For the global wealthy, it would be equally reasonable, Nagel argues, to reject revolutionary change because it could cause a dramatic and immediate shift in their circumstances, and so they may rather opt to promote economic justice through gradual change. Nagel outlines three types of reasons: egalitarian impartiality, personal interests and commitments, and consideration for what can reasonably be asked of others. From each of these perspectives, both the wealthy and the poor might hold agonistic positions that one side could not legitimately override and coerce the other.

Nagel’s thesis on global justice, presented in his Storrs Lectures and published as “The Problem of Global Justice,” is a reformulation of Rawls’s own version of liberal internationalism. Rawls argues that there is discontinuity between political principles at the domestic and the international levels. In The Law of Peoples (1999), Rawls explicitly contrasts his position with moral cosmopolitanism, which takes national boundaries to have no mitigating effect on the demands of distributive justice. Famously, Rawls praises value pluralism, and argues that not all societies can reasonably be expected to accept the liberal principle of distributive justice. Instead, he concludes, the task in the global context should be to fulfill our only duty, the duty of assistance, rather than to engineer cosmopolitan global equality. The duty of humanitarian assistance aims to facilitate raising the capacity of states to participate as an equal member in the international community.

Nagel’s theory of global justice focuses on the question of whether it is possible to justify stringent duties of justice beyond the traditional bounds of sovereign states. Equality being a demand of justice, the question of the tenability of justice on the global level is especially relevant as a deciding factor in determining whether socioeconomic justice is owed at the global level. Nagel begins with the claim that the state is and ought to be the primary guarantor of justice. Pragmatically, justice requires established and reliable institutions that can create and enforce social rules and be held accountable to the people over whom coercion is exercised. Legitimacy of coercive government is justified in liberal political theory when citizens are not only subject to the laws and authority of the state, but also the authors of it. Institutions are subject to the rule of law and the rule of law is subject to the consent of the governed. The duty of justice between citizens of the same political system is associative. Claims to positive rights – rights to social goods as opposed to negative rights which are rights to be free from harm – develop within a political community because of the unique position of citizens as subjects to an authority that exercises power in their names. It is necessary to the life of a political society that its people exercise and engage their will in ways that, Nagel argues, do not apply globally. As such, the right to justice is contained within the political community of the state.

Absent a global state, Nagel argues, we cannot form an intelligible idea of global justice. Nevertheless, given the devastating facts surrounding global inequality, he offers an argument in favor of humanitarian duties of assistance toward people who suffer from extreme deprivation. Here the distinction between relative and absolute deprivation matters. Those who live in conditions of absolute deprivation, without access to the goods necessary for survival such as food, clean water, shelter, physical security, and access to basic health care are owed assistance as a requirement of the basic humanitarian duty of the well-off to help those in dire need, because they (the well-off) are in a position to do so, with little cost to themselves. On the other hand, when a member of a political community is deprived of social goods relative to others in her community – such that she may have health care but it is subpar or well below the standard that others in her community have access to – then rectifying the relative deprivation is a matter of justice and not virtue, as it is in the humanitarian case. To be clear, duties of humanity are distinct from duties of justice.

Though Nagel supports basic humanitarian duties, he argues that they are difficult to execute without a global sovereign and in light of working with or through states that may be failed or corrupt. Even so, Nagel rejects a cosmopolitan conception of social justice – under which duties are owed to each person by virtue of their membership in the human family rather than by virtue of political membership – with the following three counterclaims.

First, as mentioned, Nagel insists that institutions are necessary to create and enforce binding relationships of citizens to the state and citizens to one another. In the absence of a global sovereign – globally shared coercive institutions that relate directly to persons rather than states – the most that can be encouraged at the global level are the virtues of humanitarianism and not duties of justice. Furthermore, Nagel adopts the Rousseauian conception that citizens form the general will of society in a way that is not the case and perhaps may not be possible or desirable due to considerations of the large scale of subjects at the global level. Socioeconomic justice within the state is required to promote the equality of its citizens and necessary to sustain cohesive bonds and cooperation.

Second, Nagel addresses the counter claim to co-national partiality that state membership is an arbitrary matter of luck. Those in favor of global impartiality argue that just as in cases of one’s gender, skin color, or the economic well-being of one’s family, state membership is a contingent matter without any special normative force. As such, being born into a poor state rather than a wealthy state should not play a morally significant role in the distribution of social goods. Nagel agrees that the accident of being born in a poor rather than a rich state is indeed arbitrary but that this alone does not justify global justice. Negative duties toward persons exist prior to associative obligations and hold equally stringent for all, irrespective of political membership. Nagel holds these duties to be global and hence favors duties of assistance. Positive duties, on the other hand, should hold only for those with strong ties to each other via coercive political institutions. That some people are victims of bad luck is regrettable but, Nagel argues in Equality and Partiality, there is no immediate solution to the bad luck of extreme poverty which would be unreasonable for all affected parties to reject from the perspectives of partial and impartial considerations. So any coercive solution would be illegitimate.

Coupled with concerns over the birth lottery is the question of how to sustain the principle of equality globally. If the state brackets our duties of justice as applied to a select some over others, it seems there is a violation of the principle of equality. Nagel tackles this issue by arguing that equal respect for all is maintained under his conception of justice because no one is excluded from the outset. Once a person is granted membership within a political community, equal status with all other members follows. Since the possibility of belonging to a political community is theoretically open to all, duties of justice hold equally for each member whoever he or she happens to be.

Finally, Nagel addresses the normative meaning of emerging global interdependence and global cooperative institutions. Though these communities may eventually evolve to be global, in the sense that their rules and norms will apply to all persons equally, their current state is international. That is to say that they are created and enforced by states to regulate interstate relations. Nagel believes that the political conception through states is the best normative formulation for socioeconomic justice, and at this time this is the best formulation because it fits the world as it is and as people perceive it to be. He does not exclude the possibility that a global state may potentially emerge. If and when it does, then duties of justice would hold globally, though the solidarity necessary for successful political communities would be difficult to construct in our culturally and religiously divisive world.

Though Nagel favors co-national partiality, he does allow for more global cooperation than the account of international justice offered by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples. Counter to Rawls, Nagel believes that local/state forces are not the only determining factors in how well a state organizes or satisfies the rights of its people. International factors such as trade, international lending, and recognition of illegitimate leaders all contribute to the internal functions of the state. Even so, Nagel insists that these factors are of secondary nature whereas the primary order is to be created and reworked within the state. A second distinction between Rawls’s and Nagel’s positions is that Nagel supports the claim that liberal societies are morally justified in promoting the development of liberal programs or agendas within illiberal societies, constrained only by practical considerations.

Offering a rather bleak prediction, Nagel argues that before justice there is usually injustice. Coercive institutions acting on their own interests must become powerful and pervasive enough in the daily lives of people in order for affected persons to claim and demand legitimacy, justice, and democracy from power structures. In order to function, coercive political institutions must adopt one set of fundamental principles around which to organize. Necessarily the adoption of one political system will exclude all incompatible competing systems. Thus, if global justice is to emerge, it will likely come out of unjust structures.

Nagel’s projects in political philosophy provide illuminating depth on the relationship between equality, justice, and political systems. Though committed to the idea of justice via political relations that are realized through the institutions of the state, Nagel is a champion of global engagement that seeks to promote the well-being of the world’s worst off. Nagel’s contribution in the debate of global justice is to draw the distinction between justice – which cannot be realized without a state – and obligations of beneficence, which humanitarianism demands, in order to satisfy people’s most basic needs.

Related Topics

Associative Duties

Basic Rights

Coercion

Compatriot Partiality Thesis

Consent

Contractarianism

Cosmopolitanism

Democratic Legitimacy

Equality

Liberal Nationalism

Partiality

Rawls, John

Reciprocity

Rights