Suchergebnisse

John Rawls argues, in The Law of Peoples, that a principle of toleration requires the international community to respect `decent hierarchical societies' that obey certain minimal human rights norms. In this article, I question that line of argument, using women's inequality as a lens. I show that Rawls's principle would require us to treat the very same practices of the very same entity differently if it happens to set up as an independent nation rather than a state within a nation, and I criticize the consequences to which this asymmetry leads. I argue that Rawls gives us no good reason to think that we cannot justify a much richer set of norms for all the world's societies. I argue, however, that issues of justification should be sharply distinguished from issues of implementation, and that respect for the moral significance of national sovereignty ought to restrain us from intervention in all but the most extreme cases.

John Rawls argues, in The Law of Peoples, that a principle of toleration requires the international community to respect 'decent hierarchical societies' that obey certain minimal human rights norms. In this article, I question that line of argument, using women's inequality as a lens. I show that Rawls's principle would require us to treat the very same practices of the very same entity differently if it happens to set up as an independent nation rather than a state within a nation, & I criticize the consequences to which this asymmetry leads. I argue that Rawls gives us no good reason to think that we cannot justify a much richer set of norms for all the world's societies. I argue, however, that issues of justification should be sharply distinguished from issues of implementation, & that respect for the moral significance of national sovereignty ought to restrain us from intervention in all but the most extreme cases. [Copyright 2002 Sage Publications, Ltd.]

Women in much of the world lack support for fundamental functions of a human life. Unequal social & political circumstances give women unequal human capabilities. This paper critiques other approaches to these inequalities & offers a version of the capabilities approach. The central question asked by the capabilities approach is not, "How satisfied is this woman?" "How much in the way of resources is she able to command?" It is, instead, "What is she actually able to do & to be?" The core idea seems to be that of the human being as a dignified free being who shapes his or her own life, rather than being passively shaped or pushed around by the world in the manner of a flock or herd animal. The basic intuition from which the capabilities approach begins, in the political arena, is that human abilities exert a moral claim that they should be developed. Capability, not functioning, is the appropriate political goal. Adapted from the source document.