Unificationist Perspectives
on Global Justice
Keisuke Noda Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Unification Theological Seminary, New York, USA
Contents
Abstract
Introduction: human nature and the possibility of justice
I. Contexts of global justice: three challenges
A. Population growth
B. Globalization
C. Postmodern conditions
1. Marxism and the challenges of progress and development
II. Self-interest and common good: the tragedy of the commons
III. Burden on the weakest
IV. Unificationist perspectives on global ethics
Conclusion
Bibliography
Abstract
The pursuit of global justice in the present era faces a wide range of challenges. This paper will focus on the challenges of population growth, globalization, and the postmodern condition; given these challenges, this paper will attempt to clarify the fundamental conditions upon which a system of social ethics can be built from an Unificationist perspective.
First, the population of human beings has increased dramatically in the past one hundred years. This increase has strained the relationship between humanity and the environment in an effort to balance ecological concerns with economic and industrial progress.
Second, while globalization has both positive and negative aspects, the current form of globalization contains a number of unethical and/or unfair rules and practices in the absence of sound global governance. In addition, structural injustice found within the current form of globalization, both domestically and internationally, contribute to poverty and the deep economic divide amongst nations.
Third, environmental issues and the failure of Marxism cast a shadow of doubt on the myth of progress and the assumptions of modernity. The skepticism, relativism, and cynicism that are a part of postmodern intellectual environments challenge our ethical theories.
This paper will point out two consequences of the above points. First, that heaviest burdens of unjust rules and practices are placed on the weakest who does not have a representative voice and power, including the environment, women and children, poor countries, people, and regions, and marginalized social sectors. Second, postmodern intellectual climates reject the stereotypical universalistic approach. They demand a more balanced perspective that pays sufficient attention to unique conditions of a particular people, area, and location.
The paper lastly describes Unificationist perspectives on global ethics.
Introduction: human nature and the possibility of justice
In Book 2 of the Republic (2.359a - 2.360d), Plato recounts the story of the “ring of Gyges.” It is a story about an ordinary shepherd who found a magic ring that makes him invisible when he wears it. This shepherd then sneaked into a palace, slept with a queen, conspired with her to kill a king, and acquired kingship for himself. With this story, Plato raises the question of whether or not man is naturally a just being; in other words, he asks whether a man is just only because of the presence of social constraints and laws.[1] This story also points out the battle against the desires of the flesh, a key theme of religious ethics.
Within the topic of social justice, two questions arise from the story of “Gyges’ ring.” First, it questions the transparency of corporations, institutions, and organizations as unjust or unethical rules and practices remain largely “invisible.” Second, it challenges us to conceive of a model for a just society.
The political concept of justice in contemporary secular environments, however, does not presuppose religious ideas. Describing the limit of a political concept of justice, John Rawls points out that it is not a comprehensive theory of morals:
Here it is important to keep in mind that justice as fairness is a political conception of justice: that is, it is designed for the special case of the basic structure of society and is not intended as a comprehensive moral doctrine.[2]
Due to its limits, political conception of justice needs to be supplemented by comprehensive moral or religious theories of justice to create a good society. Rawls acknowledges the need of moral or religious doctrines:
Besides the introduction of the idea of a political conception of justice itself, we need the idea of an overlapping consensus of comprehensive, partially comprehensive, religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines in order to formulate a more realistic conception of a well-ordered society, given the fact of pluralism of such doctrines in a liberal democracy.[3]
While supplementation of religious or ethical doctrines is necessary, it is nearly impossible to have doctrinal agreement among all members of society. We need to have a freedom of religion, which allows religions to contribute to the moral formation of members of society, but we also need a political concept of justice as the reasonable agreement among diverse social groups.[4]
Unificationism approaches the question of justice within the framework of its religious teachings, which includes basic premises such as: God is the parents of mankind who exists interdependently with human beings; human beings consist of a spiritual and physical aspect, and the spirit self lives forever in the world of afterlife; human beings can embody God’s love by living a life for the sake of others.
I. Contexts of global justice: three challenges
A. Population growth
The abrupt population growth of the last one hundred years is a factor that must be considered in a discussion of global justice. In 1830, the human population was counted at one billion. Another billion was added to it in one hundred years, another billion in 30 years, another billion in 15 years, and another billion in 12 years. In 2005, the world population reached 6.5 billion, and 800 million is continually added every year.[5] While population growth in itself is not necessarily unjust, it poses serious problems since the rapid and continual growth of population is occurring in the poorest areas of the world and in high concentration in urban areas. In 2008, 3.3 billion, more than a half of the entire population, will be living in urban areas, and it is expected to exceed 5 billion in 2030. This is the first time humanity has experienced such high concentration of people living in urban areas.[6] The population explosion is closely tied into issues of poverty, the environment, women, children, health, education, employment, and others.[7]
Population growth is in itself a complex issue. From an ethical point of view, it raises the question of responsibility and accountability for persons that are not a part of one’s immediate family. In almost all societies, the number of children a couple can have is left to the decision of parents. Thus, the process of having children is assumed to fall under the freedom of parents. However, society as a whole assumes responsibility for all children born in a society. For example, if a couple has several children and the parents cannot afford to support the financial needs of the family, all members of that society bear the costs in the form of welfare or social security. To what extent and degree is one responsible for children born in other household? Does one have a moral obligation to care for all children born to an equal degree? From a practical perspective, different degrees of care can be justified. But, is it ethically justifiable to care one’s children more than children of others?
Unification ethics approaches this problematic by looking into the issue from an ontological premise that God is a parent that exists interdependently with all humanity, and all humanity lives interdependently with each other. This would lead one to assume that while parents are responsible for their own children, in the context of Unificationism this identity of belonging to a family is extended to encompass all humanity as one global family. This assumption then extends Unification ethics, as a family-based virtue ethics, into the social sphere. Furthermore, by examining the different levels of becoming a filial son or daughter, patriot, saint, and finally a divine son or daughter of God within this issue of population growth, Unification ethics steps into the issues of freedom and social responsibility and elevates itself to a comprehensive theory which can explain the principles of justification of why, how, and to what degree one should bear responsibility for others.
B. Globalization
Globalization is a fact of the present age that has brought about tremendous benefits and problems at the same time.[8] From an ethical perspective, current rules, practices, and governance have a number of problems. Joseph Stilglitz, Nobel prize winner in economics in 2001, summarizes into five points those issues that critics raise with regards to economic globalization: unfair rules are designed for the benefit of advanced countries; primacy of material interests and values; unfair mechanisms that undermine the sovereignty of developing countries, which tries to improve the well-being of its people; widening the gap between the rich and poor; globalization is basically the Americanization of economic policy and culture.[9] Stilglitz elaborates in a number of works the unfair rules and practices of the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and multinational corporations, and the US government based on his first hand experience as a chief economist at the World Bank from 1997 to 2000, and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton from 1993 to 1997.[10] Citing a number of specific cases, rules, and events in diverse areas from finances to trade, biopiracy and copyright policies by pharmaceutical enterprises, Stilglitz concludes that the current form of economic globalization has inherent unethical and unfair rules and decision-making processes:
The rules of the game have been largely set by the advanced industrial countries -- and particularly by special interests within those countries--and, not surprisingly, they have shaped globalization to further their own interests. They have not sought to create a fair set of rules, let alone a set of rules that would promote the well-being of those in the poorest countries of the world.[11]
Globalization poses a number of questions including those of the limit of power and the role of national sovereignty; it entails questions on how to establish a fair decision making system and rules of global governance, which include a legal system and mechanisms for enforcement. The demand for balance between economic interests and social values must be brought into the architectural design of a global governing mechanism that, at least, require fairness and transparency of a governing entity.
C. Postmodern conditions
1.Marxism and the challenges of progress and development
In the nineteenth to twentieth centuries, Marxism appeared as a Messianic thought, a promising theory that promised the liberation of mankind from poverty and the related social evils. Marxism is a comprehensive doctrine that included a historical perspective, economic theory, and metaphysics. In the late twentieth century, the inherent deficiency of Marxism became evident through a series of failures in the economies and totalitarian dictatorships. As a result, intellectuals distanced themselves from similar types of comprehensive social theories. The failure of Marxism was combined with an increasing awareness of environmental issues, which led intellectuals to question the paradigms of modernity, such as the myth of progress.[12] Furthermore, globalization has forced intellectuals to frame these questions within both a global and diverse localized contexts. These factors all contribute to the development of an intellectual environment labeled as postmodernism.
Postmodernism, as a philosophical stance, can be partly characterized by a suspicion or skepticism of grand-narratives. A “grand narrative,” like Marxism, is a theory that promises to save all mankind with a comprehensive theory. The postmodernist stance is thus skeptical of an all-encompassing, mighty theory. Postmodernists propound anti-foundationism, which is defined by its skepticism of claims that there is a foundational truth upon which all others can be built. Postmodernists reject the existence of any “foundation” and philosophers’ attempt of building theories upon such a “foundation.” The postmodernist intellectual climate affected diverse areas including culture, religion, philosophy, architecture, literature, and others. Any intellectual attempt, including Unificationism, is facing the challenges of postmodernism.
II. Self-interest and common good: the tragedy of the commons
G. Hardin’s well known article "The Tragedy of the Commons. The Population Problem Has No Technical Solution; It Requires a Fundamental Extension in Morality”[13] is an article on population growth and social ethics, but his hypothetical example also illustrates the conflict between self-interest and the public good, which are relevant to both environmental problems and issues in globalization. The article unfolds as such.
Suppose a number of farmers had cattle and were raising them in a shared field or commons. If one farmer added one sheep, he or she can increase his or her profits from this sheep. The sheep eats grass and drinks water, but everyone shares the cost. Suppose another farmer did the same thing. Added one sheep and on and on. The number can be changed to ten or hundred. The point is that by adding sheep, an individual farmer can make an immediate profit, but everyone shares the negative costs of the commons. When one farmer added 1,000 sheep for example, he may lose some profit from each sheep due to lack of grass, but he can still gain more profit by adding more sheep. If every farmer competed to add more without regulation, the common will be severely damaged in the long run and not be able to feed any sheep. Without proper management, free pursuit of immediate profit leads to the tragedy of commons.
This example illustrates the process of environmental degradation. While the production of a good yields immediate, short-term profits, the environment and humanity as a whole bear the long-term costs and damages.
On the other hand, an individual entity that takes into account the public needs and concerns risks losing profit. For example, if one company makes the effort to take environmental concerns into account, it will increase costs and the company may lose their competitive edge in the market.
In advanced countries, some efforts have been made to establish laws that impose a sense of social responsibility upon manufactures. However, due to globalization, businesses can, and have, easily relocated their factories and manufacturing operations into countries that have the most lenient environmental regulations. Furthermore, environmental degradation is a trans-national harm incurred by the entire world, as is evident in global warming.
Unification social ethics must develop an adequate theory that offers a balanced approach to the short-term gain vs. long-term sustainability, and fair self-regulatory mechanism.
III. Burden on the weakest
The heaviest burden of social problems is often imposed upon the weakest in a society. Those who do not have a representative voice are placed in the most vulnerable positions such as the environment, the poor, women and children, and other marginalized social sectors. An effective approach to this issue is to look at the problem of poverty.
Poverty is a very complex issue. It includes the lack of infrastructures (such as safe drinking water and sewage system), healthcare, education, employment, food, and other basic necessities for a decent standard of living. Extreme poverty is defined as a condition in which a person’s income is less than $1 a day, which includes about 1.09 billion people (19 % of population). This number is an adjusted number based upon the monetary value in each country. Poverty is defined as that of less than $2 a day, which includes some 2.73 billion people (48 %) of the global population. 4.3 billion live on less than $10 a day (75 %) and 5.4 billion on less than $49 a day (95 %), which is the US poverty line.[14] Furthermore wealth is more inequitably distributed than income, and more than half of the wealth of the world is held by only 2% of adults while 1 % of the wealth is shared by the bottom half of all adults.[15]
There is no reasonable justification for this radical gap between the rich and the poor, and the state of global poverty. Women are placed in a vulnerable position in poor and patriarchal societies in which women are financially dependent on men and they have little or no access to education. Because of this, a woman who loses her husband due to illness, death, or divorce, is helpless. Furthermore, because of the value of the male child, there is a tendency to continue to give birth until one or two (second boy is a back up) boys are born; women who do not give birth to male child are subject to diverse forms of abuse. Thus, part of the reason for population growth in poor countries can be found in this cultural bias for the male child.
In developed countries, women have equal or near-equal opportunity to education and employment. They are economically independent and there is no preference between having a male or female baby. Women tend to marry late and prefer less number of children to continuously pursue social success. The population stability, or decrease, in advanced countries is partly due to changes in women’s social roles and cultural expectations.
IV. Unificationist perspectives on global ethics
There are some basic conceptual bases upon which Unification social ethics can be built. The followings are a few deductively drawn form Unificationism theories.