Alt is imperialism – demand for moral universalism subsumes cultural differences

On the other side of the debate, the anti-cosmopolitan position is bolstered by two sets of concerns: criticisms regarding the desirability and feasibility of a global state and concerns regarding the moral universalism that subtends the cosmopolitan position. The first set is overcome by either pointing to global structures of governance which while not as thorough going as a global state, nonetheless establish enough institutionalization to count as a context of justice, or limiting cosmopolitanism to moral articulations, abandoning political versions of the doctrine. However, the second category of objections, those pitted against moral universalism are more persistent. These objections fall into four categories: arguments regarding, our moral orientation to others far and near, an affinity between universalism and imperialism, distributive versions of global justice and the abstract individualism that subtends theories moral universalism. Concerning our moral orientation, critics argue that moral universalism problematically ignores the special responsibility we properly owe to compatriots (Morgenthau 1951; Walzer 1996). More generally, on this point, anti-cosmopolitans argue that cosmopolitanism inverts the priority of our obligations by ignoring the significance of more particular memberships and attachments. The central idea here is that proximate relationships bear a unique obligation and operate as essential sources of our moral capacity. Detractors of cosmopolitanism criticize moral universalism in a second way, arguing that moral universalism devolves into imperialism. As both Butler (1996) argue every conception of universality is always, necessarily, culturally specific. This means that any effort to reify a single ideal as universal will involve at the very least a problematic undermining of important cultural difference. More perniciously, it will become a coercive quest for hegemony. The third set of arguments against moral universalism expresses specific concern over distributive versions of global justice. Aiming for global equality, distributive global justice faces an insurmountable metric problem that applies both to efforts to equalize natural resources and to the goal of establishing an equality of opportunity. In both cases, there is no way to measure value that is not culturally specific because the value of natural resources is not set by nature but is defined by human decision. Here, Miller (2007, 59) offers the example of an oilfield, pointing out that the oilfield would be valuable only in a human society that allows the oil to be extracted and sold. Likewise, opportunity lacks objective measure in a culturally plural world where different societies define and rank goods in distinct ways. This metric problem means that any attempt to develop an equal distribution of goods and opportunities would be complicit in a denunciation of pluralism, ethnocentrically exporting one conception of value and thereby perpetrating a neo-imperialism. Furthermore, critics argue that distributive global justice problematically undermines national self-determination and political autonomy. Here, Miller argues that a meaningful conception of national self-determination requires that nations be held responsible for the outcome of their choices. The sort of international intervention needed to establish global equality would mitigate the consequences of such choices, thereby rendering national responsibility effectively meaningless: what could national responsibility mean in a world where no matter what a nation does, the outcome is the effectively the same? A related concern is that a distributive approach to global justice tends to understand persons in terms of production and distribution, resulting in a depoliticized perspective in which the significance of political participation and political autonomy is not recognized. This is problematic insofar as it belies the political agency of nations, a result which further impoverishes national responsibility. Finally, fourth, though directly related to the concerns regarding moral universalism, there is a group of objections based on a challenge to the abstract individualism on which moral universalism depends. Cosmopolitan morality argues that the single individual is the primary unit of concern; this position requires that the single individual is itself a meaningful concept. However, critics argue, it is not. More specifically, they maintain that the attempt to conceptualize humankind as a collection of discreet individuals fails to appreciate the highly significant ways in which human beings are shaped by the specificities of their lives, by the particular places they live in and the particular people they live with. In other words, critics contend that cosmopolitanism fails to understand a defining situatedness of people. Moreover, this failure leads to further problems, such as an inability to recognize the patterned and systemic character of injustice, and the fact of pluralism (Sandel 1984, 90). In this respect, the shortcoming of moral universalism is that it is too vague. In contrast, a perspective that appreciates the specific embeddedness of human beings is capable of offering a more powerful account of this injustice.