Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb - cehum - Universidade do Minho

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MARIA JOÃO CABRITA
justice, includes the duty to honor the regulatory laws of international community,
the Law of Peoples, such as respect for basic human rights [5] - recognized
“as the necessary conditions of any system of social cooperation”
(Idem, 68). Th is is the minimum requirement to acceptance of these people
on the part of reasonable citizens [6] of a liberal society, and it allows them to
be treated as equals in a well-ordered Society of Peoples.
Th e basic structure of a decent consultation hierarchy is not governed by
principles of political justice, such as the basic structure of a constitutional
democracy, but rather according to a comprehensive doctrine of justice that
respects the social and political order of others societies – this feature is the
institutional basis of their peaceful conduct and the reason why this type of
peoples enlarges the “zone of peace”, despite their defi cit in political justice.
And their participation in the Society of Peoples is evidence of their openness
to future reforms, to a possible development in a liberal direction [7] .
In Rawls’s political liberalism stability and peace between peoples, just
as peace and stability within well-ordered domestic societies, requires two
kinds of conditions: the psychological (moral learning) and the institutional
(cooperative organizations in the fi elds of trade, fi nance and political).
However, because moral learning is “the way allegiance to democratic
institutions and stability works in liberal democracies” (Audard, 2006a: 63),
Rawls ends by emphasizing the fi rst kind of conditions. He tells us, in this
sense, that just as liberal citizens develop a sense of justice, to the measure
that they grow and participate in fair institutions, so do just and decent
peoples create bonds of trust among themselves if they honor a just Law
of Peoples. Th is is due to the fact that they have a concise moral nature –
morally they are characterized by a certain pride and sense of honor, by
being motivated by reasonable interests “guided by and congruent with a
fair equality and a due respect for all peoples” (Rawls, 1999: 45), all of which
5 Th e Rawls’s list of the basic human rights include rights to life (to the means of subsistence and
security), to private property, to a certain liberty of conscience and association, to emigration
and to formal equality
6 “(...) reasonable citizens are characterized by their willingness to off er fair terms of social cooperation
among equals and by their recognition of the burdens of judgment. In addition, they are
said to affi rm only reasonable comprehensive doctrines”, in Rawls, 1999: 87.
In Political Liberalism, Rawls clarifi es the idea of reasonable in contrast to the idea of rational –
see Rawls, 1993a: 48-64.
7 “By treating decent non-democratic societies as entitled to the same rights of non-intervention
and self-determination as liberal-democratic ones, and by allowing them to follow their own
paths of development (with appropriate forms of assistance), liberal-democratic societies could
confi dently expect that public political discussion in decent nonliberal societies would lead to
their liberalization.” in Bernstein, 2006: 291.
Diacritica 25-2_Filosofia.indb 102 05-01-2012 09:38:23