Abstract

In this dissertation, I try to develop a liberal theory of international justice based on John's Rawls's theory of justice. ;Although Rawls believes that the moral methodology of this international justice is similar to the one developed in A Theory of Justice, he claims that the liberal theory of international justice is not and should not be a direct extension of his liberal theory of social justice, which applies to only some societies with certain political and social conditions. Rawls believes that two principles of international justice will be derived accordingly: the principle of international equality and the principle of basic human rights. The principle of international equality requires that states have some equal states' rights. The principle of basic human rights requires that basic human be honored by all states. Such a combination of states' rights and human rights in a theory of international justice causes controversies. On the one hand, the statist does not agree that human rights can be a fundamental principle of international justice. The cosmopolitan, on the other hand, rejects the idea of giving states such primary moral status in a moral theory of international justice. ;Rawls is not convinced by these criticisms. One important claim, I believe, Rawls wants to establish in his theory is a combination of international political pluralism and universal moral requirements. However, Rawls does not provide clear and sufficiently strong arguments for this. In this dissertation, I want to show how the goal of combining pluralism and universalism is possible and morally justifiable. ;I make clarifications of the notion of pluralism from two perspectives. First, I distinguish political pluralism from value pluralism. Second, I distinguish conditional pluralism from unconditional pluralism. I believe the kind of pluralism that Rawls wants us to accept is conditional political pluralism--I call it "Critical Political Pluralism." I argue that Rawls's most important element of his moral methodology, the notion of the Original Position, can be used to demonstrate the moral ground of Critical Political Pluralism. ;However, there are problems with Rawls's account of the Original Position. I will explain why Rawls's own account of the Original Position does not work for the purpose of explaining the moral ground of Critical Political Pluralism. So, I suggest an alternative account of the Original Position. I shall explain why my alternative account of the Original Position can provide moral support for the intended Critical Political Pluralism. Furthermore, Rawls's own account of the extension of the Original Position at the international level does not work for deriving his two principles of international justice. I shall explain why my alternative account of the Original Position can work better, which also leads us to see why it is necessary to make some revisions to Rawls's two principles of international justice and his conception of international justice. Two important elements of my re-interpretation of Rawls are, first, that I criticize Rawls's account of the derivation of the principle of human rights and, secondly, that I do not agree with Rawls's rejection of any idea of international distributive justice under the current or similar conditions of international relations. I shall explain why there is a moral ground for accepting a principle of international distributive justice. The above outline of my reconstructed Rawlsian theory of international justice is basically an idea theory