Shapcott investigates the question of justice in a culturally diverse world, asking if it is possible to conceive of a universal or cosmopolitan community in which justice to difference is achieved. Justice to difference is possible, according to Shapcott, by recognising the particular manner in which different humans identify themselves. Such recognition is most successfully accomplished through acts of communication, and in particular, conversation. The accounts of understanding developed by H. G. Gadamer provide a valuable way forward in this field. The philosophical hermeneutic account of conversation allows for the development of a level of cosmopolitan solidarity that is both 'thin' and universal, and which helps to provide a more just resolution of the tension between the values of community and difference. Students and scholars of international relations, international ethics and philosophy will be interested in this original study.

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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0260210508007985How to cite this article: RICHARD SHAPCOTT (2008). Anti-cosmopolitanism, pluralism and the cosmopolitan harm principle.Abstract. For anti-cosmopolitan critics, cosmopolitanism is equated with the universalisation of a particular, liberal, account of justice and is therefore problematic for a number of reasons. The liberal principle 'do no harm' principle -and the cosmopolitan principle of humanitarianism, can be used to correct the depiction of cosmopolitanism as hostile to 'pluralism', to identify the universalism that is latent or undeveloped in much 'anti-cosmopolitanism', and to identify further means of reconciling these positions. A cosmopolitan harm principle argues that the absence of a universal conception of justice should not provide an obstacle to the recognition of an obligation to limit transboundary harms.

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Shifts in the practices of global governance require rethinking of the constitutive norms of international society. In particular, challenges to the normative foundations of international society have arisen with the expansion of practices of international governance and a 'solidarist' turn in international society. These developments suggest the necessity of a pursuing a consensus on their legitimacy, which requires re ection on how to develop such a consensus among the members of international society and, beyond that, on whether this consensus should re ect not just interests of states but the values of their citizens as well. This paper also discusses the means whereby consensus and consent for the practices of global governance and a solidarist international society may be achieved, identifying recent thinking on the nature of good conversation and dialogical ethics as providing fruitful grounds from which this issue can be explored.