Global Justice: Cosmopolitan Approaches

Theories of justice have, until recently, focused almost entirely on justice within particular states and communities and, to a lesser extent, on international justice, that is justice between nations. In recent times much more attention is paid to the idea that considerations of justice apply globally and not only within and between nation states. This global approach to justice is part of ‘cosmopolitanism’, the label revived to identify the belief that all human beings are part of the same world-wide community: citizens of the ‘cosmos’, rather than members of particular social and political groupings (Pogge 1992).