universalism, now regarding moral principles as the distillation of the ethical
convictions of particular moral communities rather than as insights reached
through the power of human reason. Such a position has also been elaborated
by David Miller, for whom principles of justice are tied to national commu-
nities (Miller 1995 , 1999 , 2001 ).
Most theorists, however, have rejected the Rawlsian view of international
order, and begun to argue for global institutions to enforce global standards
of justice (Moellendorf 2002 ; Jones 1999 ). Allen Buchanan, for example, has
suggested that a cosmopolitan outlook should govern our reXections on
international order, and that what is most urgently necessary is a restructur-
ing of global institutions to bring them into conformity with universal
standards of morality. States, in the end, should be governed not by a primary
concern for the interests of their citizens but by a commitment to protecting
human rights everywhere in the name of the natural duty of justice (Bucha-
nan 2004 ). If it is important that human rights be protected within domestic
society, consistency, it is argued, requires that they be protected across the
globe. ‘‘In fact, just as institutionalizing an arrangement that permitted
individuals to be unjust could be seen as being complicit in the injustice, so
institutionalizing principles of international conduct that licensed oppression
could be seen as being complicit in the oppression’’ (Moellendorf 2002 , 28 ).
Consistency is undoubtedly a virtue; and complicity in oppression is, at the
very least, a questionable form of conduct. But if the danger of an aggressive
universalism can be seen clearly anywhere, it may be in the international
realm, where the ultimate purpose of political institutions should perhaps be
not the pursuit of justice but the preservation of peace (Kukathas 2006 ). It is
my suggestion that consistency dictates that we pursue no more than this in
both the domestic and the international sphere. This is not because no
universal standards of justice exist, but because peace is really theWrst virtue
of social institutions, and is the universal standard most readily embraceable
by cultures and communities of every diVerent kind.
References
Ackerly,B.A. 2000 .Political Theory and Feminist Social Criticism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Barry,B. 2001 .Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism.
Oxford: Polity.
moral universalism and cultural difference 595