1 [Penultimate draft. Final version forthcoming in Darren O’Byrne & Sybille De La Rosa (eds.) The Cosmopolitan Ideal: Challenges and Opportunities (Rowman & Littlefield). If citing, please use the published version, as there are some small changes to the text] A Feminist Cosmopolitanism: Relational or Non-Relational? Angie Pepper Feminists from a variety of theoretical backgrounds have long been engaged in a sustained and fruitful critique of contemporary theories of social justice. This feminist critique has challenged prevailing theories for being, among many other things, too abstract, i too individualistic, ii inattentive to gender, iii based on defective conceptions of personhood, iv and for drawing a strict dichotomy between public and private spheres. v However, there has been little feminist contribution to the debate concerning global distributive justice; a debate that has flourished in contemporary political philosophy for the last forty years. vi This is not to suggest that feminists are not concerned with questions of global justice. Indeed, there are many feminists working on issues of global concern such as gender injustice, oppression, the feminization of poverty, vii human rights, viii multiculturalism and women’s rights, ix and the denigration of the environment, x to name but a few. Rather, my claim is that there has been little feminist or engagement with the dominant perspectives in the contemporary debate on global justice. It is my contention that we cannot hope to develop adequate theories of global justice without paying attention to gender inequality, and oppression more broadly. Thus, feminist contributions are essential, just as they have been for improving our theorising about social justice, to improving our thinking on matters of global distributive justice. This position has recently been articulated by Alison Jaggar (2014) and others who suggest that a truly global cosmopolitanism “must be sensitive to the voices of children, women, poor, ethnic identities, and excluded groups in different geographic locations” (Nascimento, this volume). Having suggested elsewhere that feminists ought to be cosmopolitans about global justice (Pepper 2014), in this paper I will argue that feminists should be non-relational cosmopolitans about global justice. My argument is structured as follows. I begin by setting out the distinction between relational and non-relational forms of cosmopolitanism before
Transcript
1
[Penultimate draft. Final version forthcoming in Darren O’Byrne & Sybille De La Rosa (eds.)
The Cosmopolitan Ideal: Challenges and Opportunities (Rowman & Littlefield). If citing,
please use the published version, as there are some small changes to the text]
A Feminist Cosmopolitanism: Relational or Non-Relational?
Angie Pepper
Feminists from a variety of theoretical backgrounds have long been engaged in a sustained
and fruitful critique of contemporary theories of social justice. This feminist critique has
challenged prevailing theories for being, among many other things, too abstract, i too
individualistic,ii inattentive to gender,iii based on defective conceptions of personhood,iv and
for drawing a strict dichotomy between public and private spheres.v However, there has been
little feminist contribution to the debate concerning global distributive justice; a debate that
has flourished in contemporary political philosophy for the last forty years.vi This is not to
suggest that feminists are not concerned with questions of global justice. Indeed, there are
many feminists working on issues of global concern such as gender injustice, oppression, the
feminization of poverty,vii human rights,viii multiculturalism and women’s rights,ix and the
denigration of the environment,x to name but a few. Rather, my claim is that there has been
little feminist or engagement with the dominant perspectives in the contemporary debate on
global justice.
It is my contention that we cannot hope to develop adequate theories of global justice
without paying attention to gender inequality, and oppression more broadly. Thus, feminist
contributions are essential, just as they have been for improving our theorising about social
justice, to improving our thinking on matters of global distributive justice. This position has
recently been articulated by Alison Jaggar (2014) and others who suggest that a truly global
cosmopolitanism “must be sensitive to the voices of children, women, poor, ethnic identities,
and excluded groups in different geographic locations” (Nascimento, this volume).
Having suggested elsewhere that feminists ought to be cosmopolitans about global
justice (Pepper 2014), in this paper I will argue that feminists should be non-relational
cosmopolitans about global justice. My argument is structured as follows. I begin by setting
out the distinction between relational and non-relational forms of cosmopolitanism before
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moving on to consider some of the undesirable consequences of relational accounts.
Following this I suggest that there are existent feminist arguments that support and strengthen
the challenge to relational accounts. Lastly, I consider why some feminists might be thought
to favour relational forms of cosmopolitanism and I demonstrate, by examining a care
theoretical approach to personhood, why such feminist theorists would be better served by
non-relational approaches. Ultimately I argue that relational cosmopolitanism problematically
renders duties and entitlements of justice contingent on the existence of particular
relationships and thereby has the potential to exclude vulnerable individuals from the scope
of justice; an outcome that is unacceptable from both a cosmopolitan and feminist
perspective.
Relational and Non-relational Approaches to Global Distributive Justice
Cosmopolitan approaches to global distributive justice fall, broadly speaking, into two
camps: relational and non-relational. Relational accounts ground justice in features of
1989, 1992, 2002). By contrast, non-relational accounts ground justice in some feature or
features of human beings (Barry 1995, 1999; Caney 2005, 2009; Nussbaum 2000, 2006). The
fundamental difference between these two ways of grounding justice is that for relational
accounts duties of justice are contingently grounded on the existence of certain relationships,
whereas for the non-relational theorist duties of justice are not conditional on our
relationships with others but are instead rooted in our humanity.
Consider the following example. In our world, Earth, the relational cosmopolitan
maintains that we have duties to our fellow human beings because we are all locked into the
same global economic, institutional, and social scheme. Accordingly, for the relational
cosmopolitan, we have a cosmopolitan duty of justice to tackle any injustice arising from our
shared scheme of interaction and interdependence. By contrast, the non-relational
cosmopolitan thinks that “[o]ne has obligations of justice to others because they are fellow
human beings – with human needs and failings, and human capacities for, and interests, in
autonomy and well-being – and facts about interdependence do not, in themselves, determine
the scope of distributive justice” (Caney, 2009: 391). Thus, for the non-relational
cosmopolitan all humans on Earth are entitled to have their needs and interests counted when
we are trying to determine a fair pattern of distribution, regardless of whether all humans do
in fact participate in a shared global scheme.
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Now, imagine that astronomers discover another world that is populated with human
beings. On this other world, let us call it Dearth, humans are suffering from the effects of
extreme poverty: malnutrition, starvation, and disease. Moreover, imagine that scientists on
Earth develop new technologies that allow us to transport goods to Dearth. Do we, on our
relatively prosperous world, have a duty of justice to redistribute resources to those on
Dearth? That is, do we have stringent and legitimately enforceable duties to those on Dearth,
which correlate with the rights of Dearth’s citizens, to distribute resources that they are owed
as a matter of justice?
Though both relational and non-relational cosmopolitans agree that there are duties of
justice that are global in scope, by imagining two planets populated by humans we can see
how the two perspectives diverge. For a relational cosmopolitan it seems that we owe the
inhabitants of Dearth very little, if anything, as matter of justice. These two worlds are not
interdependent, there are no institutions shared between the two, and there is little social
interaction between the inhabitants of each world. Since individuals on Earth share no
relations with those on Dearth, those on Earth owe nothing, as a matter of justice, to those on
Dearth.
A non-relational cosmopolitan, on the other hand, will be committed to the idea that
we do in fact have duties of justice to people on Dearth because, like us, they are human and
it is their humanity that grounds duties and entitlements of justice. It remains to be seen what
such cosmopolitan duties would entail, and it is perfectly consistent with a cosmopolitan
approach that our duties to those on Dearth be considerably weaker, or in some way less
demanding, than our duties to fellow inhabitants on Earth. Setting these issues aside, the take
home point is that for a non-relational cosmopolitan what is owed to those on Dearth is a
matter of justice and not merely the weaker demands of a humanitarian morality.
The Moral Relevance of Social and Economic Interaction
One compelling objection to relational accounts focuses on the moral relevance of social and
economic interaction. As noted above, those who advocate relational accounts argue that
duties of justice only arise when certain relationships hold between individuals. Often the
kinds of relationships that are held to be important are those that come about when
individuals engage in schemes of social interaction and interdependence. However, following
Caney, it strikes me that when we think about distributive justice “it is difficult to see how
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and why the fact that one group of people is linked by interaction should impact on their
entitlements” (2005: 111).
Caney asks us to imagine two individuals living in separate systems of interaction
(2005: 111). Recall Earth and Dearth. Individuals on Earth have knowledge that Dearth and
its inhabitants exist and, conversely, individuals on Dearth have knowledge of Earth and its
inhabitants. However, there is no interaction between them. Now, consider Mollie who lives
on Earth, and Millie who lives on Dearth. Mollie and Millie are identical in their abilities,
efforts, and needs, and yet Mollie receives sufficient benefits for her participation in Earth’s
prosperous institutional arrangements to have a decent standard of living, while Millie,
because Dearth’s global order cannot meet the basic needs of its members, does not. Since
Mollie and Millie are identical with respect to their abilities, efforts, and needs, the only
difference between them is that Mollie had the luck of being born into a prosperous world
while Millie did not. Like Caney, I too find it difficult to see why Mollie is justly entitled to
more, and I have a hard time seeing the situation as fair.xi
To be clear, the non-relational view insists that when there is more than one human
being it is appropriate to ask whether the situation is just or not. This does not mean that
circumstances will always be sufficient to generate duties and entitlements of justice. For
example, if inhabitants of Earth were unaware of the existence of Dearth, or if they had no
means of fulfilling any redistributive duties, then the situation would not be marked by
injustice. In this scenario the disparity between the two worlds should be considered merely
unfortunate. I am assuming that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ where ‘can’ means that it is both
physically and psychologically possible. Hence, it would be meaningless to claim that the
citizens of Earth have a duty of justice to those on Dearth when they have either no
knowledge of the existence of the other world, or no means of fulfilling that obligation.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that the duties and entitlements of individuals on both
worlds are subject to revision. If circumstances change such that the inhabitants of Earth
become (a) aware of those on Dearth, and (b) have the technology to redistribute resources,
then duties of justice would be generated.
With this in mind, recall that Mollie lives on the prosperous planet Earth where most
inhabitants are aware of the plight faced by inhabitants on Dearth and that, furthermore, there
is technology available to distribute resources to Dearth. As noted above, what distinguishes
Mollie’s situation from Millie’s is that she was born into a prosperous scheme while Mille
was not. Thus, the burden now lies with the relational cosmopolitan to show that this fact –
the fact that Mille and Mollie belong to different interactional schemes – is morally relevant
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to determining the scope of justice. However, this task poses a problem for relational
accounts because the logic internal to cosmopolitanism, which most relational cosmopolitans
endorse, undermines the relational perspective (Caney 2005: 111-112). Most are agreed that
when thinking about justice we should not let our thinking be influenced by morally arbitrary
features of our world. Cosmopolitans have been keen to emphasise that just as a person’s sex,
race, class, physical attributes, and conception of the good should not affect their
entitlements, neither should the matter of where one is born. This is a fundamental
cosmopolitan thesis. None of us chooses the country into which we are born and so the fact
of where one is born is irrelevant to our reasoning about justice (Caney 2001: 115; Pogge
1989: 247; Nussbaum 1996: 133).
However, as Caney argues, if we think that the fact of where one is born is irrelevant
to our moral thinking about questions of distributive justice, then why should we consider the
scheme of interaction to which one is a member morally relevant? That is, “can someone not
equally persuasively argue that ‘one’s life prospects or one’s access to opportunities’ should
not depend on ‘morally arbitrary considerations’ such as which associational scheme one is
born into?” (Caney 2005: 112). The problem with relational cosmopolitanism is that it
commits one to the view that two similar individuals born into separate schemes of
interaction do not have duties of justice to one another, nor can they make claims on one
another, even when one is impoverished and the over is not. But this is in conflict with a key
cosmopolitan premise: people should not be penalized because of the circumstances of their
birth (Caney 2005: 112).xii
The Danger of Making Justice Contingent on Relationships
Let us for a moment ignore the charge of theoretical inconsistency, and grant that some form
of interaction is necessary to ground duties of distributive justice. In this section I will draw
out the implications of being committed to such a view. I will begin by considering why
taking justice to be contingent on certain relations is problematic from the perspective of
entitlement-bearers, before going on to argue that the consequences for duty-bearers are also
theoretically unattractive.xiii
One outcome of the relational picture is that some individuals may potentially be
denied entitlements to goods that they had previously been entitled to. The cases I have in
mind differ from the example involving Earth and Dearth. Here I am interested in cases
where relations have dissolved and individuals have become isolated from the scheme of
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interaction. For example, imagine Authentia, a state that has a government pursing isolation
in order to preserve cultural purity. Further imagine that the government manages to
successfully isolate its citizens from the rest of the global economic and social order. The
borders are closed allowing no one in (though the right to leave is protected), the import and
export of goods is prohibited, and little to no communication is permitted between those
inside and those outside of state boundaries. Now, prior to isolation, the state, and therefore
the individuals constituting the state, were part of the global economic order. As members of
the global scheme, Authentians were entitled, as a matter of justice, to certain goods and they
had certain duties of justice to others. However, at the point at which Authentia successfully
withdraws from the global economic order, Authentia’s citizens can no longer make
legitimate justice-based claims on those residing outside of the state, and non-compatriots,
incidentally, no longer have a duty of justice to Authentians.
One might argue that there is no injustice here since Authentia has chosen to isolate
itself from the global economic order. However, it seems uncontroversial to note that the
decisions of those in power do not always reflect the views or interests of the general
population. Moreover, we can further imagine that though Authentia does not intentionally
violate its citizen’s human rights it may fail (through lack of resources or an ineffective
scheme of distribution) to secure a decent standard of living for all of its citizens. What
should trouble us about this case is that, on the relational picture, the citizens of Authentia are
not eligible, because of the state’s successful separation from the global scheme, to have
anything more than their basic rights respected out of a weaker commitment to humanitarian
morality. This seems particularly problematic given that the fundamental needs and interests
of the Authentians remain the same both prior to, and after, the separation of their state from
the global scheme. While Authentians are entitlement-bearers before separation, their claims
on others outside of Authentia no longer hold once the state withdraws from the global order;
even when the state in which they live fails to secure for them a decent standard of living.
Let us now consider a different case. Imagine another state, Abundia, where citizens
enjoy a prosperous scheme of interaction. Aware of the dire poverty faced by those in other
societies, and having the capacity to redistribute resources, citizens of Abundia have a duty of
justice to redistribute to those doing less well. However, on the relational view Abundians
only have this duty if Abundia participates in a global scheme of interaction and
interdependence. This means that Abundia’s duty to those less fortunate could be dissolved if
the state successfully managed to withdraw from the global order. The chief concern here is
that it is possible on the relational view for agents to absolve themselves of duties of justice
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simply by refusing to cooperate or interact in the right ways. That is, they can change their
status as duty-bearers and in so doing avoid the claims of others less fortunate. This strikes
me as deeply inadequate.
Relational accounts, then, are problematic both from the perspective of entitlement-
bearers and duty-bearers. Those who fall outside of the global scheme of interaction cannot
be legitimate entitlement-bearers. This means that excluded individuals cannot make
legitimate claims on others to have their basic needs and interests met because they fail to
stand in the correct justice-grounding relations. In addition, prosperous countries/individuals
could freeze out resource-poor countries from the global scheme of interaction, or they
themselves could withdraw in order to dissolve distributive duties of justice to less fortunate
individuals.
The relational cosmopolitan might, at this point, respond by arguing that my examples
are too fanciful. Indeed, many cosmopolitans hold that the level of interconnectedness at the
global level makes it nigh on impossible for a government to completely isolate the state
from the global order (Held 1995). But, even if we accept this, there remains something
deeply unsatisfying about the claim that justice holds because our social world happens to be
structured in the correct way, especially when we can so easily imagine it being structured
otherwise.
Feminism, Relational Cosmopolitanism, and the Problem of Exclusion
On the basis of the forgoing discussion, it seems sensible to suggest that a feminist
cosmopolitan should adopt a non-relational account in order to avoid internal inconsistency
and unpalatable theoretical implications. Though I take these to be compelling reasons in
support of my claim that feminists should adopt non-relational versions of cosmopolitanism, I
will now consider some feminist considerations that lend additional support to the preceding
concerns. My aim here is to employ existing feminist arguments to strengthen the preceding
critique and to further demonstrate that feminists ought to be non-relational cosmopolitans
about global justice.
Feminists have sought to ensure that theories of justice encompass all those affected
by the realm of the political. In particular, feminists have critiqued mainstream theories for
neglecting the experiences of women and other oppressed social groups and for excluding
such groups from their theorizing altogether (MacKinnon 2006; Nussbaum 1999, 2000; Okin
1980, 1989, 1994). Thus, one feminist goal has been to ensure that the scope of justice
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captures all persons, and to challenge theories of social justice that arbitrarily exclude those
who do not fit the dominant model of a subject of justice or member of the moral community.
This feminist commitment to inclusion can be seen in continued efforts to include, or
challenge the exclusion of, disability in political theory. In her critique of social contract
theorists, Martha Nussbaum notes that the tradition of social contract theory, ranging from
Hobbes, Locke, and Kant to contemporary theorists like Rawls and Gauthier, fails to
adequately account for the disabled. Broadly speaking, social contract theory makes use of a
thought experiment involving freely contracting parties in an initial choice situation (pre-
political authority) to determine which constitutions, laws or principles could or would be
agreed to regulate our institutional arrangements. Nussbaum traces the inability of the social
contract tradition to accommodate disability to two deeply held commitments: “the idea that
parties to the social contract are roughly equal in power and ability, and the related idea of
mutual advantage as the goal they pursue through cooperating rather than not cooperating”
(Nussbaum 2006: 68). Theories shaped by these commitments inevitably have difficulty
accommodating disability because many disabled people (owing to the extent of their
impairment and/or because of how society is structured) are not equal in power and ability
and some (owing to the extent of their impairment and/or because of how society is
structured) cannot cooperate in a scheme for mutual advantage.xiv Being committed to the
idea that contracting parties in the initial choice situation are rough equals, who cooperate for
mutual advantage, hinges on the assumption that the parties are representatives of ‘normal’
citizens. This is problematic from the point of view of social justice because the needs and
interests of all those who do not fit the paradigm of ‘normality’ do not factor into the parties’
reasoning, neither do they inform the conception of justice agreed upon.
I take it that a key factor in the exclusion of those with disabilities from the initial
choice situation is that they are deemed unable to cooperate with others in a scheme for
mutual advantage. This seems suggestive of a relational approach to social justice because
the scope of justice extends to include all of those engaged in the cooperative scheme. Hence,
such approaches are relational because duties and entitlements of justice are generated
between those who stand in particular cooperative relationships with one another i.e.
mutually advantageous cooperative relationships. The difficulty for many people with
disabilities is that they may (owing to the extent of their impairment and/or because of how
society is structured) not be able to cooperate in ways that are deemed mutually advantageous
to other members in the scheme, or they may not be able to cooperate at all. Consequently,
many people with disabilities will be viewed as unable to stand in the correct justice-
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grounding relationship of cooperation for mutual advantage, and are, therefore, beyond the
scope of justice.
The challenge that disability poses for social contract theory suggests that social
contract theory cannot provide us with a viable theoretical framework for conceptions of
justice. A theory of social justice ought to encompass all actual citizens not just the
theoretical ideal of a citizen. Moreover, principles of social justice ought to be informed by
the perspectives of all citizens; not merely those of the nondisabled. Thus, as Nussbaum
argues, social contract theory is politically inadequate because the disabled “are not being
treated as full equals of other citizens; their voices are not being heard when basic principles
are chosen” (2006: 15). This is a question of scope. The proper subjects of justice are those
represented by parties in the initial choice situation. All those who are not represented fall
outside of the scope of justice and their needs and interests can only be factored in at a later
stage.
These points demonstrate how equality generally, and not just the equality of women
specifically, is of central importance to the feminist agenda. Attempts to undermine the
equality of individuals on the basis of arbitrary factors, such as sex, race, and disability have
been challenged time and again. It is this deep-rooted commitment to substantive equality,
which suggests that a non-relational cosmopolitanism is more compatible with feminist goals
than relational accounts.
As we saw in the previous section, when the duties and entitlements required by
justice are made contingent on certain relationships holding, it is possible that some
individuals will lose their claims on others. That is, individuals who exist outside of the
appropriate scheme of institutions or interaction will be beyond the scope of justice, and on
social contract theories of social justice it is possible for individuals to stand outside of the
scope of justice because they cannot cooperate with others in mutually advantageous ways.
Given the commitment to the equality of women to men, and the more general commitment
to equality between all individuals, this should be of concern to feminists. Individuals who
fall outside of the scope of justice are not the full moral equals of those considered to be
within its bounds. Moreover, their exclusion tells us that they are not regarded as the proper
subjects of justice.
I take all this to suggest that relational theorists will have a harder time meeting the
demands of those committed to both the moral and substantive equality of all humans.
Relational cosmopolitanism permits a situation in which two human beings similar in need,
interests, and capacity, can be unequal in both moral worth and in their status as the proper
10
subject of justice when the only difference between them is the scheme of interaction in
which they live out their lives. This possibility conflicts with the feminist commitment to
substantive equality which challenges all barriers that undermine a person’s equal political
and moral status. When a theoretical perspective allows that the place of one’s birth can
affect one’s moral status and entitlements such a view is plainly incompatible with a
feminism that seeks to preserve the equal moral worth of all.
A Feminist Objection to Non-Relational Cosmopolitanism
One might argue that while I have provided some feminist arguments for thinking that non-
relational cosmopolitanism is to be preferred to relational cosmopolitanism, there is a long
history of feminist thought that suggests the contrary. In particular, I have in mind the ethics
of care tradition which is motivated by the fact that all of us are, for significant periods of our
lives, dependent on others. Each of us is dependent on others in the initial stages of our lives,
and across a lifetime we are likely to require, and enjoy, care from others in a variety of
ways. For some, the role of care will be crucial to their ongoing survival and they will be
highly dependent on others throughout the course of their lives. These undeniable facts about
the human condition make care, for the care ethicist, a (if not the) fundamental value.
Consequently, care theorists reject the normative priority given to individuals in much of
contemporary political philosophy and instead take caring relationships as primary because
such relationships are “normatively prior to the individual’s well being” (Held 2006: 102).
At first glance the ethics of care looks to be more compatible with relational
cosmopolitanism than with the non-relational approaches that I have been arguing for.
Relational cosmopolitans are keen to emphasise human interdependence at the global level;
they argue that we are all enmeshed in a global network of relationships; they acknowledge
that some relationships are problematic because they render already disadvantaged people
vulnerable to further abuses; and they stress the need to foster better relationships with one
another and seek to eliminate the harms that the privileged do to the world’s worst off.
Importantly, relational cosmopolitans reject the statist picture of international politics that
takes states as independent, self-sufficient units because to accept such a picture would be to
hold a false view of the actual world in which we live. Given that care theorists are also keen
to emphasise the interdependence of individuals, the importance of relationships, the
importance of fostering good caring relationships, and they reject the view of persons as
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independent, self-sufficient beings, there looks, initially, to be a lot that the care theorists
would find appealing in relational accounts.xv
Though relational accounts appear to have much in common with the ethics of care
tradition, it is my contention that the aims of care theorists would be better met by a non-
relational approach. To show this I will consider Eva Kittay’s work (2001, 2005) on the
moral status of the severely cognitively impaired. Grounding her position in an ethics of care
Kittay argues that the category of personhood should be extended to encompass individuals
with severe cognitive impairments. The conception of personhood put forward by Kittay is
relational and her reasons for favouring a relational approach suggest that relational
cosmopolitanism would better reflect some of her concerns. However, as I will argue, a
relational view has problematic consequences and renders the moral status of the severely
cognitively impaired insecure in ways that a non-relational approach does not.
It is often argued, or implied, in moral theory that those with severe cognitive
impairments stand outside of the moral community because they lack certain crucial
capacities that are necessary for moral reasoning. Kittay rejects the idea that personhood can
be fixed solely on the basis of certain capacities and instead argues that duties and
entitlements of justice are generated by the human relationships that we engage in. Since
many human beings with severe cognitive impairments engage in human relationships, they
should be considered persons. This thought is captured in the following:
We do not become a person without the engagement of other persons—their
care, as well as their recognition of the uniqueness and the connectedness of
our human agency, and the distinctiveness of our particularly human relations
to others and of the world we fashion.
(Kittay 2001: 568. Emphasis added)
For Kittay, then, personhood is constituted by the scheme of human relationships that an
individual finds themselves embedded in.xvi On this account, ‘persons’ are created by the
interpersonal network of human relationships. That is, without the network of human social
relations there would be no persons. Kittay notes that many of the most profoundly
cognitively impaired are capable of saying a few words, engaging with others, and being
responsive to the world around them and, hence, on her account they are persons.
It is clear that Kittay’s position is seemingly more compatible with relational
cosmopolitanism than with non-relational cosmopolitanism. Moreover, because non-
12
relational cosmopolitanism grounds duties and entitlements of justice in features of human
beings, there is good reason to suspect that Kittay, and others who hold similar relational
views, will find non-relational positions unappealing. However, building on the arguments
made thus far, I contend that we should be wary of attempts to ground duties and entitlements
of justice in certain relationships because the claims of certain individuals may be
undermined when the correct relationship fails to hold.
The lives of many severely cognitively impaired people, both historically and at
present, are blighted by rejection and negligence on the part of their families and the
communities into which they are born. Indeed, it is a sad truth that globally many of these
individuals receive little more than the human contact necessary to keep them alive and it
would be difficult to argue that they are engaged in networks of human relationships in any
meaningful sense.xvii Moreover, across the globe it is all too common for those born with
severe physical and/or mental impairments to not be given the requisite care for survival.
Kittay suggests that a person is a being who has the ‘uniqueness and the connectedness of
their human agency’ recognised by others, but in a world in which disability is stigmatized I
worry that this condition of personhood may be too demanding since there is much evidence
to suggest that many disabled people are not recognised in these ways.xviii
Kittay would hold that the personhood of these humans is not in question despite the
failure on the part of others to recognize their status as persons. Thus I believe her aims
would be better met by emphasizing the capacity of the severely cognitively impaired to
engage in human relationships, rather than on them actually being engaged in human
relationships. By focusing on the capacity to engage in certain relations with other persons it
makes no difference whether those relations are actualized and thus people do not lose their
status as persons just because they have been socially excluded or are deemed to be unworthy
of care.
Kittay may try to argue against me here. She suggests that social relations are not ad
hoc relationships requiring two fully conscious agents:
By a ‘social relation’ I mean a place in a matrix of relationships embedded
in social practices through which the relations acquire meanings. It is by
virtue of the meanings that the relationships acquire in social practices that
duties are delineated, ways we enter and exit relationships are determined,
emotional responses are deemed appropriate, and so forth. A social relation
13
in this sense need not be dependent on ongoing interpersonal relationships
between conscious individuals.
(Kittay 2005)
Given this understanding of a social relation, Kittay could argue that my challenge misses the
mark because her account does not require that persons stand in actual relations with one
another. While there may be failures of care for certain individuals, and though some
individuals cannot be said to be engaged in human relations in any meaningful sense, this
does not change their status as persons. I take it that the thought is roughly that social
practices give meaning to social relations in some way. When certain individuals are socially
excluded, isolated, and left generally uncared for, the failure can be located in a breakdown in
our understanding of what is appropriately required in those relationships. So, the severely
cognitively impaired who are isolated, neglected, and excluded from socially meaningful
relationships, may still count as persons just in virtue of being embedded in a social world
that gives particular meaning and understanding to our relationships.
It is difficult to ascertain precisely what Kittay means here but she does provide us
with an example that helps to illuminate her account. For Kittay the parents of an
anencephalic child may care for their child and feel that the child has suffered a loss even
though the child is incapable of engaging with them (2005: 109-110). The reason for this is
that they remain, in spite of the tragedy of the situation, parents to the child, and the social
network within which they live determines that their responses are appropriate to the parent-
child relationship. A social relation, in this case the parent-child relationship, is given
meaning by the social practices of the community and so even in cases where there is no
longer an ongoing interpersonal relationship or where the relationship is dysfunctional, there
is still a set of appropriate and inappropriate behaviours and attitudes associated with that
relationship.
But Kittay’s account has troubling consequences. Although the situation for some of
the world’s cognitively and physically impaired has improved, there is no society today that
fully protects the basic rights of, and secures substantive equality for, those with disabilities:
In every region in the world, in every country in the world, persons with
disabilities often live on the margins of society, deprived of some of life’s
fundamental experiences. They have little hope of going to school, getting a
job, having their own home, creating a family and raising their children,
14
enjoying a social life or voting. For the vast majority of the world’s persons
with disabilities, shops, public facilities and transport, and even information
are largely out of reach.
(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs et al 2007)
Since people with physical and cognitive impairments are frequently stigmatized and
discriminated against, making their status as persons contingent on social attitudes is a
politically risky theoretical strategy. There are pervasive negative stereotypes and
discriminatory social attitudes towards disability in most societies. Unfortunately it is not
uncommon for those with physical and mental impairments to have their agency undermined,
and to be regarded as morally and politically unequal to the nondisabled. Given the
prevalence of harmful attitudes towards those with disabilities, it is not obvious that the
network of human relations into which people with disabilities are born will be sufficient to
secure their personhood.
Recall that on Kittay’s picture social practices shape the network of human
relationships into which an individual is born and they give meaning to our social relations.
Thus, our social practices in some sense define our social relations; giving them meaning and
marking out appropriate and inappropriate behaviours associated with those relationships.
Moreover, our social practices determine the duties that we have to one another in virtue of
the particular relations that we share. If we grant that in general the cognitively and
physically impaired are subject to negative and discriminatory social attitudes that rely on
implicit assumptions about the inferiority of those with disabilities, then we have good cause
to be sceptical about Kittay’s account to secure personhood for the severely cognitively
impaired.
Though social practices may determine the meaning of, say, child/parent,
wife/husband, teacher/pupil, employer/employee relationships, there is little to suggest that
the socially determined meanings of these relationships will be the same for those with
disabilities as they are for those without disabilities. In fact, given the prevalence of negative
attitudes towards disability it seems likely that there will be an alternative set of social
meanings for relationships involving those with disabilities and those meanings will
determine an alternative set of associated behaviours and duties.
This is well illustrated in WHO’s World Report of Disability (2011). The report
suggests that negative social attitudes are manifested in the relationships between disabled
15
people and healthcare workers, teachers, employers, and family members (WHO 2011: 262).
A good example of how this works is in the education of disabled children:
Negative attitudes are a major obstacle to the education of disabled children.
In some cultures people with disabilities are seen as a form of divine
punishment or as carriers of bad fortune. As a result, children with disabilities
who could be in school are sometimes not permitted to attend. A community-
based study in Rwanda found that perceptions of impairments affected
whether a child with a disability attended school. Negative community
attitudes were also reflected in the language used to refer to people with
disabilities.
The attitudes of teachers, school administrators, other children, and
even family members affect the inclusion of children with disabilities in
mainstream schools. Some school teachers, including head teachers, believe
they are not obliged to teach children with disabilities.
(WHO 2011: 216)
Here we can see how social practices and attitudes shape an alternative set of meanings for
relationships involving disabled people. In this case, the teacher/pupil relationship can differ
radically when it involves a disabled pupil. The above statement indicates that social attitudes
to disability can lead to the exclusion of disabled children from the teacher/pupil relationship
altogether. When there are negative attitudes and hostility towards disability, disabled
children may not be the right kind of beings who can be pupils. And, importantly, the duties
that teachers have as teachers may not extend to disabled to children. Thus, the negative
social attitudes and practices affect the nature of the relationships that disabled people can
have, and may, in certain contexts, undermine their agency, equal moral worth, and
ultimately their status as persons.
Generally, the social meaning of human relationships is contextual and in constant
flux. Thus, there are countless examples where social attitudes and practices have defined
particular social relations in ways that are harmful to members of particular social groups.
Not all that long ago, British social attitudes and practices associated with the wife/husband
relationship put married women in a position of political and economic vulnerability.xix In a
society where ‘a man’s home is his castle’ in which he is to rule over his wife and children,
where domestic violence is widespread, where women have no say politically, and where it is
16
only right and proper that the husband controls the family income, on what grounds could it
be claimed that the meaning of social relations secure the status of women as the full equals
to men? Moreover, it is not clear that those living in the society just outlined would be
prepared to concede that women are in fact persons.xx The trouble with Kittay’s account is
that an individual’s status as a person is tied to how society perceives them. If you happen to
be a member of a socially marginalised group, about whom negative stereotypes and attitudes
are prevalent, then there is no guarantee that you will be recognised as a person and it is
unlikely that the meaning of social relations can help to secure that status for you.
Though Kittay is at pains to stress that relationships are pivotal to the concept of
personhood, I have suggested that the capacity to be in certain relationships with other
persons would better secure the status of the severely cognitively disabled as persons. Not
only do I think that grounding personhood in capacity would more successfully achieve
Kittay’s aims, but I also believe that this suggestion is not completely at odds with her view.
At times Kittay herself implies that it is the capacity to be in certain relationships with other
persons that is crucial to personhood:
I propose that being a person means having the capacity to be in certain
relationships with other persons, to sustain contact with other persons, to
shape one’s own world and the world of others, and to have a life that
another person can conceive of as an imaginative possibility for him- or
herself.
(Kittay 2001: 568. Emphasis added)
Although relationships do in many important ways come to constitute who we are as people,
it seems to me that without the capacity to be in certain relations with others it is doubtful
that a human being could meaningfully engage with other persons in ways that seem essential
to Kittay’s definition. If a human being lacks the capacity to engage in distinctively human
relations with other persons, then they seemingly do not qualify for personhood since the
capacity for engagement in distinctively human relationships with other persons is essential
for such relationships to get off of the ground.
Thus, the important thing is not that a person stands in particular relationships with
others but that they have the capacity to do so. It should also be clear that having the capacity
to be in certain relationships with others is indicative of a non-relational approach. A
conception of personhood grounded in capacity, irrespective of whether that capacity is
17
rationality or the capacity to engage in certain relationships, is non-relational since it fixes
personhood in some feature of individuals. It does not require, unlike relational views, that
human beings stand in certain relations to others before they count as persons. Despite
Kittay’s attested commitment to a relational view of personhood, there is room in her account
to ground her conception of personhood on a human capacity rather than human
relationships.
Consequently, I hope to have demonstrated that Kittay’s position, and the views of
others who argue similarly, should not be seen as incompatible with the non-relational
cosmopolitan perspective that I have been advancing here. Moreover, I think that in order to
more accurately reflect the capacities of the severely cognitively impaired, and avoid the
worry that some cognitively impaired individuals may not be owed anything on grounds of
justice because society fails to view them as beings capable of certain kinds of valuable
relationships, Kittay would be better off adopting a non-relational view. On this view, what
confers someone the moral status of a person, and thus secures them the status of a being
entitled to goods as a matter of justice, is the capacity to be in certain relationships with other
persons.
Conclusion
In this paper I have argued that there are good reasons for both feminists and cosmopolitans
to abandon relational approaches to global justice in favour of those that are non-relational.
Having argued that relational cosmopolitanism is inconsistent with a core cosmopolitan
commitment, I then spelt out some of the problematic consequences of adopting a relational
approach. I suggested that there are two sides to the dangers of making justice contingent on
certain relationships: (1) individuals may lose their just entitlements when the relationship,
for whatever reason, cannot be sustained; and (2) individuals may absolve themselves of their
duties of justice by disengaging from relationships.
Following this I considered Nussbaum’s argument that social contract theory is an
inappropriate model for securing justice for those with physical and cognitive impairments.
My aim was to show that there is an existing feminist critique of relational theories of justice.
Moreover, I suggested that this critique supports my earlier conclusion that relational
cosmopolitanism problematically renders justice contingent on the existence of particular
relationships, and this should give feminists further reason to be wary of such approaches.
Finally, I argued that though one might think that certain strands of feminist thought,
18
particularly the ethics of care, might in fact be more compatible with relational accounts,
there are good reasons to doubt this. To demonstrate why, I considered the work of Kittay as
someone who is rooted in the ethics of care tradition and who has articulated a view that
looks to be relational in nature. I argued that Kittay’s relational approach suffers from
problems similar to those outlined above, and that her goal of protecting the moral status of
those with severe cognitive impairments would be better met by adopting a non-relational
approach to moral personhood, and, indeed, a non-relational form of cosmopolitanism.
In general, I hope to have shown how approaching the contemporary philosophical
debate on global distributive justice from a feminist perspective can help us to develop a
more critical and inclusive cosmopolitanism. That is, by applying a feminist analysis to the
existing literature we can shape accounts of distributive justice that genuinely protect the
world’s most vulnerable people. What is more, it should by now be clear that feminists and
cosmopolitans alike must reject relational approaches to global justice in order to avoid
placing the needs and interests of some of the world’s most vulnerable people beyond
justice’s reach.
i This objection can be found in the following: Benhabib (1987, 1992); Held (2006); MacKinnon (1989); Young (1990). ii See, for example, Benhabib (2002); Held (2006); Jaggar (1983); Kittay (1999, 2005); Young (1990). iii See, for example, Nussbaum (2003, 2006) and Okin (1989a, 1996, 2005a). iv Eva Kittay (1999, 2001, 2005, 2009). v For instance, Elshtain (1993); Landes (1998); Okin (1989a); Pateman (1989); Young (1986). vi Martha Nussbaum is one of the few feminist theorists working in this area and she has written extensively on women and global justice. Nussbaum both critiques contemporary theories of global justice for their inattention to gender and advocates the capabilities approach as an alternative (2000, 2004, 2006). Similarly, though not to the same degree, Iris Marion Young (2000, 2006) situates herself in the contemporary global justice debate when she discusses global democracy, self-determination, and global responsibility. Also, see Onora O’Neill (1990) who has emphasised the importance of making women’s inequality central to our theorising about global justice. vii See Jaggar (2009, 2013) and Okin (2003). viii See, for example, Bunch (1994); MacKinnon (2006); Okin (1998); Parekh (2008); Reilly (2009). ix For instance, Benhabib (2002); Okin (1998, 2005b); Phillips (2007, 2010). x Ecofeminists, for instance, see the domination of women and nature as interconnected and attempt to address the global exploitation and denigration of our planet by calling for sustainable development that is ecologically sound, non-patriarchal, and non-exploitative (Mies & Shiva (1993); Eaton & Lorentzen (2003)). xi It should be noted that to my knowledge Caney does not himself discuss a ‘two-worlds’ scenario. Thus, although I believe the conclusions that I draw here follow from his view he might have other reasons for resisting the idea that the inequality between Millie and Mollie is an unjust one. xii This is not intended to be a full discussion about the possibility of taking interaction to be relevant to our moral thinking about distributive justice. Indeed, despite what I have said here, it might turn out that institutional frameworks and schemes of interaction are morally relevant when it comes to, say, determining the content of the principles of justice. However, I have tried to suggest that when we consider the scope of justice, relational cosmopolitans who attempt to restrict the scope of justice to institutional/interactional schemes do so contrary to the logic of cosmopolitanism. xiii I borrow the terms ‘duty-bearer’ and ‘entitlement-bearer’ from Caney (2005) as a useful way of highlighting that distributive justice is concerned both with what people are entitled to and what duties they have to others. xiv It is also worth noting that there are not in fact any human beings who can fulfil these two commitments fully over the whole course of a human lifetime. Nussbaum points this out when she suggests that a theory of social
19
justice must recognise that nondisabled people also have periods of their lives where they are entirely dependent on others (as in infancy) and that many suffer from temporary impairment and disability (2006: 99). xv One might object that to suggest that there could be a possible allegiance between care theory and any type of cosmopolitanism is misguided. Since care theorists reject the language of rights and justice, so the objection could go, their views are fundamentally incompatible with theories of distributive justice. I think that this objection falsely represents much of the recent work in care ethics. Many care theorists now agree that justice is an important value but disagree about the weight attributed to it in our moral thinking. Given this, it would be wrongheaded to argue that a care theorist could not, or would not want to, endorse an approach to questions of global distributive justice. xvi Though I am sympathetic to many of Kittay’s arguments, I remain unconvinced about the plausibility of her conception of personhood and thus this discussion should not be taken as a wholehearted endorsement of her view. The crucial point is that regardless of whether one takes her view to be convincing, her aims would be better met by a non-relational account over the relational one that she at times seems to favour. xvii As noted in the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report The State of the World’s Children: Children with Disabilities, “in many countries, responses to the situation of children with disabilities are largely limited to institutionalization, abandonment or neglect” (2013: 1). xviii See, for example, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) World Report on Disability (2011) and the British Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) Hidden in Plain Sight - Inquiry into Disability-Related Harassment (2011). xix I do not mean to imply that the institution of marriage in the UK no longer results in gender inequality, only that things were considerably worse for women’s status as persons than they are now. xx See William Blackstone’s portrayal of 18th century English law where he describes how marriage alters the legal status of women by subsuming the wife’s personhood into that of the husband and suspending the “very being or legal existence of the woman […] during the marriage” (Blackstone, 1775: 442).
20
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