The current global (dis)order may be regarded unjust since over a billion people suffer human rights abuse and degrading poverty.From an ethical perspective, when the institutional order of a global society fails to safeguard its members’ human rights, those who significantly collaborate in the imposition of this order should share the burden of effectively carrying out their responsibility.

Focusing on the various global issues (for example, corruption in politics, terrorism, poverty, and financial instability) viewed as negative effects of global interdependence, this paper examines if the ethics of global responsibility may be a guiding principle for the construction of a more just global society.The paper also explores how global ethics can be conceptualized in reference to the theories that have recently been put forth by ethical philosophers such as Th. Pogge and A. Linklater.

公共政策は規範や価値に関する思考と深い関係にある。その点で価値や規範を正面から扱う

本稿では規範や価値を扱う

This study considers political philosophy as a normative inquiry and examines how the topic of peace can be approached. Political philosophy, particularly theories of justice, is a normative study that deals with the “ought” in the world, in contrast to empirical studies that consider the empirical aspects of the world. Approaches to this question can be divided into two subfields: ideal and non-ideal theories. In the international community, non-ideal theories have been considered as the primary issue in confronting a non-ideal state of affairs, such as the use of force. One such theory is the just war tradition. A controversy between utopianism and realism over the idealization level to be employed in normative studies exists even within this theoretical framework. Political philosophy includes aspects that dare to uphold unrealistic utopias. The possible agendas of peace studies that can be interpreted as extensions of these aspects include opportunity-cost pacifism, justice in the abolition of war, and the theory of world integration.

Realists often criticize pacifism for its overly idealistic security model and the fact that it does not reflect the reality of international society, thus concluding that it does more harm than good. To ensure the security of a state, so these critics say, pacifists rely on the utopian ideas of cooperation and dialogue, whereas realists give much more weight to realistic means, such as balance and power. Pacifists, however, do not think of their own security model as being too optimistic. Rather, in their view, the realist security model of the balance of power rests on a controversial premise that simply assumes the practice of rational self-restraint by those who actually manipulate political and military power.

Both pacifists and realists appear to assert that their opponent’s theory is just a fantasy, and that their own theory truly captures the reality of the world. In my opinion, however, such a controversy, in which each side competes to be less idealistic and more realistic than the other, seems to be off the point, because theorizing in general cannot help but inevitably contain some idealized abstraction of our reality. What should be asked instead is, what the purpose of the idealization is, and whether it is accompanied with some viable options for dealing with a notalways-ideal reality.

This paper makes reference to recent methodological studies in contemporary political philosophy concerning the ideal/non-ideal theory distinction, with an aim to correct the nature and purpose of the above-mentioned (and somewhat misleading) realist-pacifist dispute. After making clear that realists are not different frompacifists in that they, too, idealize part of our reality through the process of theorizing, I suggest that a non-ideal reality be incorporated into the theory again to meet the requirements of practical feasibility. Lastly, I emphasize that our attempt to depict a utopian ideal nevertheless continues to play an important constitutive role in the entire theoretical enterprise.