Review Essay: Philosophers Crossing Borders Recent Literature on Ethics and International Relations
| Author | Raino Malnes |
| Date | 01 June 1983 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002234338302000207 |
| Published date | 01 June 1983 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review
Essay:
Philosophers
Crossing
Borders
Recent
Literature
on
Ethics
and
International
Relations*
RAINO
MALNES
The
Fridtjof
Nansen
Institute
at
Polhøgda,
Oslo**
Recent
years
have
seen
an
upsurge
of
interest
among
moral
philosophers
in
questions
of
international
distribution
and
the
relationship
between
rich
and
poor
countries.
Efforts
are
being
made,
in
the
first
place,
to
replace
the
prevalent
image
of
international
relations
as
a
Hobbesian
’state
of
nature’
with
a
model
in
which
more
room
is
left
for
moral
choice.
In
the
second
place,
the
foundation,
content
and
limits
of
our
obligations
to
join
in
the
combat
of
poverty
are
put
under
scrutiny.
The
essay
discusses
some
of
the
problems
raised
by
this
application
of
normative
theory
to
issues
which
in
many
ways
are
ill-suited
for
moral
theorizing.
While
normal
philosophers
of
the
present
century
were
long
preoccupied
almost
ex-
clusively
with
esoteric
problems
of
language
and
logic,
the
last
decade
has
witnessed
an
upsurge
of
interest
in
public
affairs.
In
the
wake
of
this
sudden
turn
from
purely
theoretical
concerns
to
’real
world’
matters,
1
attention
has
also
increasingly
been
focused
on
the
international
scene.
To
be
sure,
certain
aspects
of
relations
among
states,
notably
those
which
involve
the
use
of
force,
have
continually
engrossed
the
minds
of
moral
philosophers
since
Cicero
developed
the
first
just-war
theory
in
the
first
century
B.C.
However,
questions
pertaining
to
the
inter-
*
The
books
under
review
are:
Charles
R.
Beitz,
1979.
Political
Theory
and
International
Relations.
Princeton,
N.J.,
Princeton
University
Press;
Peter
G.
Brown
and
Henry
Shue,
eds.,
1981.
Boundaries.
National
Autonomy
and
Its
Limits.
Totowa,
N.J.,
Rowman
and
Littlefield;
James
S.
Fishkin,
1982.
The
Limits
of
Obligation,
New
Haven
and
London,
Yale
University
Press;
Andrew
Linklater,
1982.
Men
and
Citizens
in
the
Theory
of
International
Relations,
London,
Macmillan;
Henry
Shue,
1980.
Basic
Rights,
Subsistence
Affluence,
and
U. S.
Foreign
Policy.
Princeton,
N.J.,
Princeton
University
Press.
**
This
article
is
identifiable
as
publication
EP2:
1983
from
the
Fridtjof
Nansen
Institute
at
Polhogda,
Oslo,
Norway.
national
distribution
of
material
resources
and
the
gross
inequalities
of
life
conditions
in
the
world
have
only
recently
become
the
subject
of
systematic
exploration
in
normative
theory.
This
essay
discusses
some
of
the
problems
raised
by
these
first
ventures
of
professional
philosophers
into
an
area
which
hitherto,
prudentially
or
out
of
neglect,
has
been
left
uncharted.2
2
The
shadow
of
Thomas
Hobbes
According
to
one
of
the
pioneers
in
this
field
of
enquiry,
’(i)t
would
be
difficult
to
think
of
a
practically
more
important
or
an
intellectually
more
unmanageable
challenge’
than
that
of
developing
normative
standards
for
the
assessment
of
transnational
interactions
(Shue
1982,
710).
If,
however,
practical
importance
is
judged
at
least
partially
in
terms
of
likely
practical
impact,
this
contention
will
be
dismissed
by
many
analysts
of
inter-
national
relations
as
a
blend
of
wishful
thinking
and
political
naivet6.
The
dominant
tradition
of
international
theory,
which
goes
back
to
Thucydides’
account
of
the
Pelopon-
nesian
war
and
is
dignified
by
the
label
’political
realism’,
depicts
relations
among
states
as
a
’...
realm
of
recurrence
and
repetition ...
the
field
in
which
political
action
is
most
regularly
necessitous’,
and
therefore
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