not isolated individuals, but members of other national communities (Miller, 1995:
73). We do not relate to outsiders simply as human beings, but as citizens of other
countries. In the advice example the distribution of the good – advice – is conditioned
by the fact that the student from the other college will be privileged in their dealings
with tutors from their college. An analogous situation does not arise with the drive
to the hospital: here Miller is faced with a ‘human being’ rather than a ‘college
student’.
Unlike MacIntyre, Miller does not claim that moral agency is only possible within
the particular community in which you are born. Indeed, living in a community
relieves the individual of the pressure of excessive demands for impartiality. He
does, however, develop the idea that the goods which are up for distribution have
to be conceptualised in context, and furthermore, the criteria for distribution must
also be understood contextually. Attitudes to money, work, honours, status and
political power are determined by our culture and thus the values we attach to these
things are culturally determined. The criteria for a just distribution of the goods
also vary: all societies have some notion of ‘merit’ but what in fact is meritorious
differs between them (Miller, 2000: 169). How we measure deprivation can depend
on intersubjective considerations: lacking a television or access to the Internet might
be a deprivation for children in a society where these things are valued.
Miller acknowledges that there are millions of people in the world who are
disadvantaged relative to others in an across-the-board sense – they score lower on
every measure that corresponds to a significant good: money, housing, education,
health care and political rights (2000: 173). But given conflicting interpretations of
the ‘goods’ which are to be distributed and of the criteria for distribution, the task
of developing a global, transcultural conception of justice would likely result in a
minimal set of basic goods and correspondingly a relatively weak principle of global
distribution. Miller sums up what he thinks are the demands of global justice under
three heads: (a) the obligation to respect basic human rights; (b) the obligation to
refrain from exploiting vulnerable communities and individuals; (c) the obligation
to provide all political communities with the opportunity to achieve self-
determination and social justice (2000: 177).
What cosmopolitanism and particularism share is a collapsing of the distinction
between the level of individual morality and politics. Although Miller comes closest
to recognising that distinction with his emphasis on reciprocity both positions seek
to derive political principles – principles of justice – from claims about the nature
of the individual. Of course, they come to different conclusions about the nature
of those principles, but nonetheless there is a conceptual similarity between them.
The political conception of justice on the other hand is based on an explicit
distinction between justice and other virtues, or between justice as applied at the
domestic level as against the international level. In the next section we discuss the
work of two defenders of the political conception: John Rawls and Thomas Nagel.Political conception
Rawls argues that relatively well-ordered societies have a duty to bring burdened
societies, along with outlaw societies, into the society of peoples (Rawls, 1999: 106).492 Part 4 Contemporary ideas