Ethical debates in international relations tend to rely either on the vocabulary of norms or the vocabulary of evil. In an effort to conceive of a richer international ethics, this article explores the possibility of combining the two. Since the vocabulary of norms is indispensable, the question is how to supplement it. The most prevalent conception of evil turns out to be a dangerous and inappropriate supplement, for it posits evil as absolutelynot-self, and as an attribute of foes to be eradicated. The second conception of evil highlights the connections between evil and self. When applied to the international context, this conception encourages self-critical public debates about present and past injustices, helping societies to confront and heal ethnic, racial, and other political wounds. Thus a rich international ethics is best woven out of the vocabulary of norms and the conception of evil as connected-to-self.
Following Iris Marion Young, Catherine Lu allocates responsibility for transforming unjust global structures to the agents who participate in perpetuating and reproducing those structures. She also adopts Young's qualitative distinction between the 'liability' and 'social connection' models of responsibility, reserving the first for interactional injustice where identifiable victims and perpetrators are involved, and the second for structural injustice where unjust outcomes emerge without any identifiable wrongdoers. This article's argument is that Young's and Lu's specific allocation of the burden for transforming unjust global structures makes sense only if we reject the notion of a qualitative distinction between two models of responsibility and acknowledge instead that there is continuity in the conceptual tools available for thinking about responsibility for both interactional and structural injustice.
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