12 - The original position in The Law of Peoples

Summary

Introduction

What kinds of principles should guide liberal peoples in their international affairs, especially when dealing with people who are not apparently committed to liberal values? If they are true liberals, should they insist, wherever possible and likely to prove effective, that other peoples conform to liberal standards or at least gradually evolve in a liberal direction? Alternatively, should they be tolerant of others who hold non-liberal commitments and not attempt to steer them towards liberal democratic ideals? How are we to identify the limit for any appropriate tolerance that we ought to exercise? What responsibilities do affluent developed societies have to those that are poor and developing? What form should any assistance take when advantaged countries try to help disadvantaged ones?

Clearly, these are important questions worthy of considerable reflection. And these are the sorts of issues that Rawls attempts to address in his highly influential work The Law of Peoples (LP). The original position plays a central role in deriving the principles that should guide liberal foreign policy. In this chapter we discuss Rawls's original position argument in LP. In the next section I outline the argument Rawls offers for the principles that constitute his Law of Peoples, highlighting the role played by the original position in arriving at guidance in international affairs. Section 12.3 covers some critical engagment with those arguments while section 12.4 discusses some ways in which Rawls, or rather those who would defend him, might address key challenges. Section 12.5 takes stock of the debate between the two sides and emphasizes the strengths of both Rawls's peoples-focused and cosmopolitan perspectives in pursuing a global realistic utopia. I show how Rawls's position on duties to address global poverty and his views concerning how to interact with non-liberal societies contain considerable insights that are not adequately acknowledged.

Rawls's Law of Peoples: some highlights featuring the original position

To appreciate the dynamics of the debate surrounding LP we must very briefly highlight several key moves Rawls makes in his earlier ground-breaking work, TJ. There he sets out to derive the principles of justice that should govern liberal societies. He makes use of the innovative original position technique to craft an ingenious thought experiment. The original position is a theoretical device often used to test the fairness of principles that aim at justice.