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Rawls and Walzer on Non-Domestic Justice

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Abstract

This article illuminates the relationship between John Rawls' and Michael Walzer's accounts of non-domestic justice by tracing its connection to their domestic relationship. More precisely, it (a) places the celebrated positional shifts that characterize the latter (i.e., as is generally accepted, Rawls took a hermeneutic ‘turn’, and Walzer a universalist one) within the context of the fundamental justificatory tension between their projects which endures: reason vs trust; and then (b) juxtaposes this justificatory tension and their non-domestic political prescriptions. Such contextualization is important to the clarification of the pair's non-domestic relationship since it enables the observation that despite this enduring justificatory tension these political prescriptions are remarkably similar.

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Notes

  1. For their helpful and thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this article, I thank Shane O'Neill, Keith Breen, Susan McManus, and the two anonymous reviewers of this journal.

  2. I say ‘some’ since cosmopolitans can, of course, differ on their views of state borders (see O O'Neill, 1996).

  3. On the potential problems of this assumption, see Shane O'Neill's discussion of Northern Ireland (S O'Neill, 1997, chapter 8).

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Walsh, C. Rawls and Walzer on Non-Domestic Justice. Contemp Polit Theory 6, 419–436 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300303

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