over Sub-subbrazil both positions insist on, or defend, the discrepancy between
domestic and global justice, but they differ in how they go about justifying it. The
political conception adopts strategy (b) – that is, it accepts the need for a universalist
defence of the discrepancy. Particularism maintains the discrepancy but rejects the
need for a universalist justification of it.
Alasdair MacIntyre offers a radically particularist defence of patriotism, and, by
extension, rejects global justice. The defence is ‘radical’ in that he eschews appeal
to universalism with regard to justice in general: universalism is false at the domestic
level as well as in the global sphere. Patriotism should not, MacIntyre maintains,
be defended by appeal to ideals: American politicians who claim that the United
States deserves our – or Americans’ – allegiance because it champions freedom are
defending the ideal of freedom and not the USA as a nation (MacIntyre, 1995: 210).
MacIntyre undercuts the cosmopolitans’ strategy of forcing liberals to face up to
the universalism implicit in their claims. Pogge argues that liberals are committed
to moral universalism, such that their failure to extend justice globally is a moral
blind spot. MacIntyre simply rejects universalism: patriotism is a ‘kind of loyalty
to a particular nation which only those possessing that particular nationality can
exhibit’ (MacIntyre, 1995: 210). Two nations may have achieved the same things
- for example, economic prosperity – but those achievements are valued not just
as achievements, but as the achievements of this particular nation. Patriotism belongs
to a class of loyalty-exhibiting virtues, along with marital fidelity, love of one’s
family and friendship.
MacIntyre contrasts these virtues with the derivation of value – valuing one’s
nation, family, friends and so on – from an impartial, or impersonal, standpoint.
The latter would require that partiality towards one’s nation, or one’s compatriots,
be justified universally. This might be done by arguing that patriotism is indeed a
virtue but one which commits us to enabling citizens of other nations to value their
nations. This generates a conflict between partiality and impartiality:
What your community requires as the material prerequisites for your survival as
a distinctive community... may be exclusive use of the same or some of the
same natural resources as my community requires for its survival and growth
into a distinctive nation. When such a conflict arises, the standpoint of impersonal
morality requires an allocation of goods such that each individual person counts
for one and no more than one, while the patriotic standpoint requires that I
strive to further the interests of my community and you strive to further the
interests of your community.
(MacIntyre, 1995: 213)
The impersonal standpoint – which translates politically into cosmopolitanism –
has, MacIntyre argues, five features: (a) morality is composed of rules to which any
rational person would assent; (b) the rules are neutral between rival interests; (c)
the rules are neutral between rival beliefs; (d) the basic moral unit is the individual
human being and individuals count equally; (e) the standpoint of the moral agent
is the same for all and is independent of any social particularity. According to this
view whereand from whomyou learn the principles of morality are as irrelevant
as where and from whom you learn the principles of mathematics (MacIntyre, 1995:
214–15). For MacIntyre this is mistaken. Justice is concerned with the distribution
of goods but those ‘goods’ are enjoyed in particular social settings: ‘what I enjoy
Chapter 22 Global justice 489