Positive Rights and the Cosmopolitan Community: A Rights-Centered Foundation for Global Ethics

The recent transnational wave of destruction that was caused by the earthquake-induced tsunamis in South East Asia has raised the issue of global justice in terms of the rights of victims to expect aid relief and the moral responsibility of the rest of the world to provide it. In this paper I will discuss the issue of global ethics in terms of positive rights that people have to assistance from others when they cannot provide such assistance themselves. The main object of the paper is to demonstrate that positive rights are universal and global in scope and cannot therefore be restricted by any national, religious, cultural or other social boundaries. Such rights provide a rational and ethical foundation for global justice that is cosmopolitan. The argument for the position offered in the paper will be broadly based on the moral philosophy of Alan Gewirth.1 1. The sources referred to in this paper with regard to Gewith's moral philosophy will, in the main, be: Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) and Alan Gewirth, The Community of Rights (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). For ease of reference, Reason and Morality will be referred to in the body of the paper as RM and Community of Rights as CR.