IB Philosophy 10.6.6 Global Justice and Cross-cultural Application Notes

Universalism and the Challenge of Cultural Difference

1. The central tension is between moral universalism and cultural relativism. Universalism holds that certain moral standards apply to all human beings simply in virtue of their humanity.
   1. Cultural relativism holds that moral norms are valid only within the cultural framework that produces them, and that no culture has the authority to judge another's practices.
2. At the same time, Nussbaum is sensitive to the charge of cultural imperialism. Western nations have historically justified colonial domination by claiming to bring 'civilisation' to supposedly inferior peoples.
   1. Any universalist framework must therefore demonstrate that it does not simply export Western values under the guise of universal norms.
3. The concept of internal criticism is central to her argument. Nussbaum observes that in every culture, there are voices that challenge traditional practices from within.
   1. Women who demand education, workers who resist exploitation, and minorities who claim equal dignity are not importing foreign ideas; they are drawing on resources already present in their own traditions.

Nussbaum's Defence of Cross-Cultural Validity

1. Nussbaum's capabilities approach, as discussed in earlier topics (10.6.1 to 10.6.5), makes a universalist claim: every human being, regardless of nationality, culture, or social position, is entitled to a minimum threshold of the ten central capabilities. This topic examines whether such a universal framework can be applied across diverse cultural contexts without imposing a single cultural vision on the world.
2. Nussbaum rejects strong cultural relativism on the grounds that it makes it impossible to criticise practices such as forced marriage, denial of education to women, or caste-based discrimination. If all moral standards are culturally relative, then the claim that these practices are unjust has no force outside the culture that already condemns them.
3. Nussbaum argues that the capabilities list is derived not from any single cultural tradition but from a cross-cultural dialogue about what it means to live a fully human life. She draws on philosophical resources from Aristotle, Confucius, Indian political thought, and African communitarian philosophy to show that the core capabilities resonate across traditions.
4. This approach shares ground with Amartya Sen's emphasis on public reasoning across cultural boundaries. Sen argues that every major civilisation has traditions of rational debate and dissent, and that the claim that certain values are exclusively 'Western' distorts the actual history of moral thought.
5. Nussbaum further argues that the capabilities list is deliberately abstract. Each capability is specified at a level of generality that allows for diverse local interpretations.
   1. The capability of 'affiliation,' for example, does not prescribe a specific family structure; it requires only that people have genuine opportunities for meaningful social connection.
6. The philosophical case for universalism does not claim that Western liberal democracy is the only legitimate political order. Instead, it rests on the observation that certain forms of suffering, such as starvation, torture, and the denial of education, are recognisable as injustice across cultures, even when particular cultures tolerate or institutionalise them.

The Capabilities Approach and Global Development

1. Nussbaum's framework has significant implications for international development policy. Traditional development economics measures progress primarily through GDP per capita, a metric that tells us nothing about how resources are distributed or whether citizens can actually lead dignified lives.
2. The Human Development Index (HDI), developed by Sen and adopted by the United Nations, represents a partial move towards capability-based measurement. It combines indicators of income, education, and life expectancy, offering a more nuanced picture of development than GDP alone.
3. Nussbaum goes further than the HDI by insisting on a threshold of adequacy for each of the ten central capabilities. Development is not merely about raising averages; it requires ensuring that no individual falls below the minimum on any capability.
   1. This is a demand of justice, not merely of efficiency.
4. Gender justice is a central concern of Nussbaum's global framework. She argues that women in developing nations are disproportionately denied capabilities in education, political participation, bodily integrity, and economic independence.
   1. Any approach to development that ignores these gendered disparities is fundamentally incomplete.
5. Nussbaum critiques utilitarian development models that sacrifice individual well-being for aggregate growth. A country may achieve impressive economic expansion while leaving millions of citizens without access to healthcare, clean water, or basic education.

Global Obligations and Institutional Justice

1. The capabilities approach rejects this trade-off as morally unacceptable.

1. She also addresses the role of international institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. Nussbaum argues that these institutions should adopt capability metrics as the primary standard for evaluating development programmes, replacing the narrow focus on economic liberalisation.
2. The question of global distributive justice arises naturally from the capabilities framework. If every human being is entitled to a minimum threshold of capabilities, then wealthy nations bear some responsibility for addressing capability failures in poorer countries.
   1. This challenges the Westphalian model of absolute state sovereignty in matters of domestic policy.
3. Nussbaum's approach connects to the work of Thomas Pogge, who argues that global institutional arrangements actively harm the world's poorest people. Pogge's concept of institutional injustice complements Nussbaum's capabilities framework by identifying the structural causes of capability deprivation at the international level.
4. Pogge's argument (World Poverty and Human Rights, Ch. 1) is that the global institutional order, including trade agreements, patent laws, financial regulations, and border policies, actively harms the global poor rather than merely failing to help them. This is a negative duty (we are causing harm), not a positive duty (charity).
5. Pharmaceutical patent protections, for example, prevent developing countries from manufacturing generic anti-retrovirals, pricing HIV medications out of reach for millions in sub-Saharan Africa. Pogge calls this an 'institutional harm' because rich-country governments designed these rules knowing their effects.
   1. For Nussbaum, this extends the capabilities framework to international obligations: wealthy nations are not merely in a position to help but are actively engineering capability deprivation, making intervention a matter of justice, not charity.

Objections from Cultural Relativism and Postcolonial Thought

1. Postcolonial critics raise the sharpest objections to Nussbaum's universalism. Thinkers such as Gayatri Spivak argue that Western-derived frameworks inevitably reproduce colonial power relations, even when their proponents sincerely intend otherwise.
   1. The act of defining 'the good life' for others is itself a form of epistemic domination (controlling knowledge and defining reality on behalf of others, leaving them no voice in what counts as a good life).
2. Spivak's argument (Can the Subaltern Speak?, 1988) is that Western feminist and liberal discourse systematically silences the 'subaltern', those at the margins of both colonial and native elites, by constituting them as objects of knowledge rather than speaking subjects. Even when Western academics claim to speak 'for' oppressed women in the Global South, they construct those women as incapable of self-articulation.
   1. Western campaigns against female genital cutting that treat African women as passive victims needing rescue, rather than engaging with the political movements of African women themselves who are contesting these practices, illustrate the dynamic. Nussbaum's response: her framework specifically requires internal criticism, meaning the capability claims must be validated by the voices of those affected, not merely asserted from outside.
3. Edward Said's concept of Orientalism provides a further challenge. Said argues that Western representations of non-Western cultures consistently construct them as inferior, irrational, or in need of guidance.
   1. A universalist capabilities list, critics suggest, may simply be the latest expression of this representational power (the ability to define how others are seen and judged, without their input).
4. Said's analysis (Orientalism, 1978) showed that European scholarly, literary, and political writing about the 'Orient' did not describe a pre-existing reality but produced the Orient as an exotic, irrational, and backward Other requiring Western rational governance. British colonial administrators used Orientalist scholarship to justify ruling India 'for its own good' because Indian institutions were deemed incapable of self-governance.
   1. Applied to Nussbaum: a capabilities list produced primarily in Western academic philosophy and imposed through international development institutions risks functioning as the latest Orientalist gesture, defining the non-Western world's 'deficiencies' from a position of discursive power. Nussbaum's counter: the list was developed through fieldwork with NGOs and women's groups in India, not in isolation, and explicitly invites revision through cross-cultural dialogue.

Nussbaum's Replies and Appiah's Cosmopolitanism

1. Nussbaum responds to these objections in several ways. First, she emphasises that the capabilities list was developed through extensive cross-cultural dialogue, not imposed from a single tradition.
   1. Second, she notes that many of the strongest advocates of capabilities-based justice are scholars and activists from the Global South, not Western outsiders.
2. She further argues that cultural relativism, taken to its logical conclusion, silences the voices of the oppressed within every culture. When a relativist insists that practices of gender discrimination must be respected as 'cultural,' they are typically siding with the most powerful members of that culture against its most vulnerable.
3. Kwame Anthony Appiah's concept of cosmopolitanism offers a complementary perspective. Appiah argues for a form of universalism that respects cultural diversity while insisting on the equal dignity of every human being.
   1. This resonates with Nussbaum's attempt to combine universal standards with local sensitivity.
4. Appiah's key move (Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Ch. 1) is distinguishing universal values (every person matters) from uniform practices (everyone must live the same way). Conversations across cultural difference are both possible and necessary.
5. People can change each other's minds without either party abandoning their cultural identity. Appiah reflects on his Ghanaian father's life in The Ethics of Identity: his father held both Asante traditional identity and cosmopolitan liberal values simultaneously, without contradiction.
   1. For Nussbaum, cosmopolitanism supports her claim that the capabilities list is not cultural imperialism. One can endorse the capability of bodily integrity while understanding its specific content differently across cultures.

Adaptive Preferences, Fanon, and the Limits of Relativism

1. The concept of adaptive preferences, discussed in 10.6.5, is relevant here. When people raised under oppressive conditions express satisfaction with their circumstances, their preferences may reflect internalised oppression rather than genuine consent.
   1. The capabilities approach provides a standard for justice that does not depend on whether the oppressed endorse their own oppression.
2. The debate also connects to Fanon's analysis of the psychological effects of colonialism. Fanon argues that colonial domination distorts the self-understanding of colonised peoples, creating false consciousness that must be overcome through political and cultural liberation.
   1. Nussbaum's framework can be read as providing the conditions for such liberation by securing the capabilities necessary for autonomous self-determination.
3. Ultimately, the question of cross-cultural application requires a careful distinction between two very different claims: the claim that all human beings deserve certain basic opportunities (which Nussbaum defends), and the claim that all human beings should live in the same way (which she explicitly rejects). The strength of the capabilities approach lies in its insistence on this distinction.

Global Justice in Dialogue with Other Philosophers

1. Nussbaum's global framework can be compared with Rawls's The Law of Peoples. Rawls argues that principles of justice apply primarily within individual societies and that international obligations are limited to basic human rights and a duty of assistance.
   1. Nussbaum criticises this as insufficiently demanding, arguing that justice requires capability guarantees for every person, not just basic non-violation of rights.
2. Peter Singer's utilitarian cosmopolitanism provides another contrast. Singer argues that affluent individuals and nations have strong moral obligations to prevent suffering wherever it occurs, regardless of national boundaries.
   1. While Nussbaum shares Singer's concern for global poverty, she rejects his utilitarian framework on the grounds that it fails to respect the distinctness of individual persons.
3. The capabilities approach also engages with Confucian thought on government responsibility. The Confucian concept of ren (benevolence, or active care for others' welfare) holds that rulers are obligated to promote the welfare of all people, not merely to refrain from harming them.
   1. This resonates with Nussbaum's insistence that the state must actively enable human flourishing.
4. Ubuntu philosophy from the Southern African tradition offers a further point of connection. The principle that a person is a person through other people (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu) emphasises the relational and communal dimensions of human life, echoing Nussbaum's capability of affiliation and her critique of atomistic individualism.

Kant, De Beauvoir, and Cross-Cultural Implications

1. Nussbaum's framework challenges the Hobbesian tradition in international relations, which treats the global order as an anarchic competition among sovereign states. If capabilities are universal entitlements, then the international system must be restructured to protect the vulnerable rather than merely to manage conflicts among the powerful.
2. The approach connects to Kant's cosmopolitan ideal of a world order governed by universal moral principles. Kant argues in Perpetual Peace that all human beings have a right to hospitality and that states are morally obligated to work towards a peaceful international federation.
   1. Nussbaum builds on this tradition by specifying the substantive content of cosmopolitan justice.
3. De Beauvoir's analysis of the Other is relevant to the problem of cross-cultural application. De Beauvoir argues that dominant groups consistently define marginalised groups as inferior, and that liberation requires the mutual recognition of equal humanity.
   1. Nussbaum's capabilities approach provides institutional mechanisms for achieving this recognition at a global scale.
4. For IB Philosophy students, this topic illustrates how the capabilities approach engages with the broadest questions of political philosophy: What do we owe to strangers? Can justice be global in scope?
   1. How do we balance universal moral commitments with respect for cultural diversity? These questions are central to the IB curriculum's emphasis on cross-cultural philosophical dialogue.