Non-Domination as Care – Making a Case For Globalized Justice

Fellow-Vortrag IV: Ndidi Nwaneri M.A. (Chicago)

Global injustice is usually discussed as, and thereby limited to, the problem of global poverty. Such a perspective does not capture other important aspects of global injustice, and does not provide adequate grounds for moral arguments to eradicate poverty. I hold the position that social relations result from intersubjective relations. Social injustice, including global injustice, is therefore better understood as the result of the expression of human agency in a way that inhibits another. A theory of global justice should therefore move beyond the distributive paradigm to interrogating global power structures, as expressed in intersubjective relations. I see global injustice as the result of unjustifiable domination of some moral agents by others, and argue that its mitigation will involve taking the right and duty of non-domination as the minimum standard of all global interactions.

In an attempt to develop a theory to ground this position, I engage with the critical theories of Axel Honneth, Nancy Fraser and Rainer Forst. I argue that in the absence of a global democratic order, the right to justification could serve as a standard in global interactions. I therefore conclude that of the three, Forst’s theory of the right to justification seems the most promising for a global justice theory.

Ndidi Nwaneri M.A. war für einige Jahre in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit tätig und arbeitet an einer Dissertation zum Thema Globale Gerechtigkeit.