Global Justice Without A Center Reapprai PDF
Global Justice Without A Center Reapprai PDF
Jun-Hyeok Kwak
(Sun Yat-sen University)
Introduction
Within the confines of Chinese political philosophy, Tianxia (天下 All under Heaven)
has been frequently regarded as an alternative to Eurocentric international relations
(Li 2002; Zhang 2010; Carlson 2011; Wang 2017a). This way of understanding the
notion of Tianxia is not limited to those scholars who wish to place China or a ‘Chinese-
style IR’ at the center of world politics. More and more Chinese intellectuals have
written about Tianxia as a way of overcoming world problems that have been situated
in the very nature of the nation-state system since the Westphalian treaties.
On the one hand, Chinese scholars find in the traditional conceptions of Tianxia
another cosmopolitanism the backdrop of which does not relate to liberal democracy
or Eurocentric universalism – that conceives people everywhere as the same,
providing that there are the universal norms and practices of ‘liberal’ or ‘civilized’
society. They do not deny the ethical imperative of cosmopolitanism in world politics.
But they suggest the notion of Tianxia which is interwoven with traditional Chinese
concepts such as ‘nothing excluded’ (wuwai,无外) and ‘benevolent governance’
(wangdao,王道) as a paradigmatic alternative to liberal cosmopolitanism or Eurocentric
universalism. At this juncture, the latter is chiefly perceived as an imperialistic
dominance or a ‘failed’ project (Zhao 2009; Yan 2011, 21-144; Gan 2012; Wu 2013;
Wang 2017b).
On the other hand, Chinese scholars redeploy the practices of Tianxia in Chinese
history as the very rationale for building up a ‘Chinese-style’ peaceful coexistence as
opposed to the post-Cold War world in which major powers compete to seize
hegemony in world politics (Hua 2005, Han 2012). At first sight, such advocacy of a
Chinese-style international order appears to be in opposition to the politics of
hegemony in international relations, since it puts forward a ‘harmonious relationship’
among states whose ‘diverse’ and ‘plural’ voices cannot be unified with a universal
value. However, implicit in their emphasis on the Chinese tributary order in which
China was placed at the center of a hierarchical empire while the neighboring countries
were nothing but tributary states, they aspire to the revival of the Chinese empire in
the post-Cold War world. By the same token, juxtaposed with the image of the Chinese
empire for over two millennia, they attempt to recapitulate the vision of Tianxia as the
greatness of the Chinese empire that is strongly inscribed in the Chinese psyche as a
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benevolent empire ruling neighboring countries through concessions.
This chapter does not deal with the latter group of scholars whose main arguments
consciously or unconsciously intend to embody a political culture that puts forward
China as a global hegemon. Instead, it tackles the first group of scholars whose
‘Chinese-style’ cosmopolitanism is espoused by the notion of Tianxia. More specifically,
this chapter is composed of three main parts. First, I examine the Chinese-style
cosmopolitanism driven by the reinterpretation of Tianxia. By doing so, I claim that it
retains the very fallacy that can be found in the liberal cosmopolitanism that fails to
provide us with a regulative principle through which culturally and politically
different justifications for justice can be steered to a democratic and non-dominating
deliberation between states. Second, analyzing the notions of Tianxia in the periphery
surrounding China, mostly in Korea, I explore a conception of Tianxia in which all
countries are placed on an equal footing without any center. Finally, I will suggest a
model of reciprocal non-domination in which non-domination as a regulative
principle can help better establish a discursive stance between states without a central
hegemon.
The notion of ‘family’ is thought to be the natural basis and strongest evidence of
human love, harmony, mutual concern and obligations, a concentrated model of
‘the very essence of humanity’ (Zhao 2009, 13)
As we can see above, the superiority of the notion of Tianxia as a Chinese model of a
world institution is insinuated between the lines. No one can deny that the underlying
argument in the conception of family above is the Confucian formula of justifying a
hierarchical order for moral cultivation. As a matter of fact, with several quotes from
the Chinese Classics, Zhao calls attention to what has been canonized since Zhu Xi as
‘the road to tianxia’ that starts from the cultivation of virtue in an individual person
and ends up with that of the world (tianxia). Likewise, in his quote from Daodejing
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Chapter 54, what we need to reckon is not the acknowledgment of ‘diverse views’ from
different positions or ‘mutual love’ across boundaries but the imperative of cultivating
‘virtue’ (Zhao 2009, 9). At this juncture, the world order of Tianxia construed as a
‘family’ structure embracing all without exception is governed by or operated in a
hierarchical order in which a superior state is expected to lead benevolently while
others need to follow her voluntarily. Furthermore, there is nothing we can find in the
notion of Tianxia that can be applied to the weaker states to give them a voice against
or resist the strongest state whose benevolent governance does not meet their general
demands for reciprocal deliberation.
As Zhao (2009, 27-28) elaborates, Tianxia consists of three different but mutually
interwoven conceptions. First, Tianxia is a geographical term that refers to all under
the heaven. In other words, it signifies the world as a geographical whole where all
human beings can dwell. Second, it means ‘minxin’ (民心 hearts of the people) that can
be reflected through the minds of all living on the Earth. It is a psychological
conception with which a transformation of enemies into friends through the notion of
Tianxia can be explained as moral or ethical assimilation. Third, it designates the ideal
of the world system that could be realized through the notion of Tianxia. It signifies a
political ideal as well as a regulative principle with which we can evaluate our own
system. Recently, he puts more moral principles into the notion of Tianxia which
embrace such a broad scope of global issues in the traditional Chinese sense that the
Way of Heaven is the Way of Nature (2015, 19), such as ‘in accordance with nature’
(peitian,配天: living within the limits given by Nature), ‘birthing birth (shengsheng,生生:
unceasing life), and ‘nothing excluded’ (wuwai,无外).
However, as explained in the previous section, the notion of Tianxia retains the
persistently lasting conception that connotes a hierarchical system in which China is
placed at the center of civilization. Combined with the concept of ‘zhongguo’ (中国
central kingdom), Tianxia frequently conveys that for the world order China is in fact
the central state. In this Sino-centric order, neighboring states are classified as
‘barbarians,’ and thereby the employment of the word Tianxia itself may be viewed as
a strong self-consciousness of the political and cultural superiority of China over
neighboring countries. Especially for the 17th and 18th century intellectuals in China’s
neighboring countries, such a Sino-centric view of Tianxia was perceived as nothing
but a political justification of China’s illegitimate domination over the other states.
Shocked by the emergence of the Manchuria-based Qing dynasty in 1644, Korean and
Japanese Confucian scholars openly questioned the Sino-centric view of Tianxia whose
validity was severely damaged by the replacement of the Ming dynasty with the
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Manchurian Empire.
Some of them strove to place their own countries at the center of the world. For
instance, Yamazaki Ansai (山崎闇斎 1619-1682), a Japanese neo-Confucian scholar,
urged that one’s own country would be more precious than anything else, and his
disciple Asami Keisai (淺見絅齋 1652-1711) refuted the Sino-centric view of Tianxia by
conceptualizing Japan as the new center of the world (Nakai 1980). Similar features
were found in the mentality of ‘little China’(小中华) which called the Qing dynasty a
barbarian empire while rendering Korea as an alternative center. For proponents of
the little China mentality, the highest duty was to respect highly the moral superiority
of the Ming dynasty. And, needless to say, the denunciation of the Qing dynasty
became a scholarly vogue among intellectuals in the late 17th century (Cho 1996; Park
2013, 229-366; Fuma 2015, 118-171). No substantial difference in the presupposition of
a hierarchical system can be found between the Sino-centric view of Tianxia in China
and the ‘little Sino-centrism’ in Japan and Korea.
In the meantime, there was a group of scholars in Korea who aimed to overcome both
Sino-centrism and little Sino-centrism altogether. This group was called as Silhak (實學
practical learning) whose frequent encounters with Western disciplines of learning
(西學) in the 18th century garnered an unprecedented interest in Korean history.
Western astronomical science ushered in the re-evaluation of the Sino-centric view of
Tianxia, and subsequently the traditional notion of Tianxia in which one state was
placed at the center of the world started to be dismantled. For them, the little Sino-
centrism that came to the fore in Japan and Korea after the emergence of the
Manchuria-based Qing dynasty was not so very different from the Sino-centric view
of Tianxia that relegated all China’s neighboring countries to the periphery.
Such an innovative view of Tianxia was reflected most clearly in a booklet, Dialogue on
Mount Uisan (醫山問答), which was written by a Silhak scholar, Hong Daeyong
(洪大容 1731-1783). In particular, in substantiating the fallacies of Sino-centrism
through the mouth of Silong (實翁 practical old-man), Hong conceptualizes a new view
of Tianxia. First, he adduces that all countries are equal in Tianxia.
Seen from heaven (天), how can there be any distinction between ‘in’ and ‘out’?
Thus China (华) and barbarians (夷) are all the same in the sense that each feels
close to his own compatriots, each respects his own ruler, each defends his own
country, and each finds comfort in his own customs (Hong 2011, 148-149. my
translation).
At first glance, the quote above appears to state something similar to what we have
seen through the notions of wuwai and datong in Chinese-style cosmopolitanism.
However, if we look carefully, we can see that Silong neither attempts to elaborate an
ideal of Tianxia nor aims to suggest the highest overall principle governing the world
order. Rather he simply portrays a feature in which all, including China and her
neighboring countries, dwell. In this feature, equality between countries, or at least an
equal cause for justification between countries, is concretized as a condition through
which the ideal of Tianxia that all can be embraced is actualized.
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Second, Hong goes further to suggest that in the order of Tianxia, there is no center.
Using his knowledge of Western astronomical science, Silong answers the question of
whether the earth is the center of the universe.
Of all the stars in the heaven, there is not one that is not a world unto itself. If we
look from other heavenly stars, the Earth is nothing but another heavenly body.
An unlimited number of worlds are spread out across the universe, and thereby
saying that only the earth is the center of this is not reasonable (Hong 2011, 61. my
translation).
Based on scientific observation, Hong urges that any sort of centrism goes astray from
the order of Tianxia. At this juncture, the hierarchical order of Tianxia promulgated
with the distinction between China and barbarians is discarded, and any centrism that
places one’s country at the center is rejected. Rather, he maintains that all states,
whether civilized or uncivilized, are identical to each other in their nature and thereby
each state should be relativized as just one among many states existing in the order of
Tianxia (Hong 2011, 150).
Reciprocal Non-domination
With respect to an equal access to justification between states, the recent criticisms of
the neo-Roman republican theories of global justice are significantly meaningful.1 In
1 Republican theorists have recently suggested that states rather than individuals should be placed at the
center of creating and reforming global justice. This drift to a ‘state-based’ rationale for global justice is
not surprising in the sense that concerns over social justice within bounded societies or geopolitical
territories lie at the center of republican thinking about civic responsibility and democratic rights. There
is, however, a further concern in the recent shift to a state-based rationale for global justice in
republicanism. That is the question of domination across borders. In particular, neo-Roman republicans
whose theoretical backdrop is consistently one of the Roman republican traditions – in which freedom
should be understood not simply as choice but as a social status or a legal condition that requires a secure
independence from the arbitrary will of another (Pettit 2014, xiii-xvii & 28-73; Pettit 1997, 21-27; Skinner
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these internal and external criticisms, the neo-Roman republicans, Philip Pettit in
particular, should have focused more on the question of ‘structural domination’ and
the problem of unequal ‘justificatory power’ between states (Rigstad 2011; Forst 2013
& 2015; Muller 2015; Laborde and Ronzoni 2016). These partly indicate some of the
criticisms provoked by Pettit’s individualistic approach to sociopolitical relations or
his reservation of freedom as emancipation (Markell 2008; Urbinati 2011). Rather, they
penetrate deeply into the gist of all neo-Roman republican thought, that is ‘the equal
access to justification for non-domination.’ Actually, neo-Roman republicans are
aware of the priority of justificatory power in actualizing non-domination across
borders. For instance, Pettit maintains that liberty as non-domination is “a structural
ideal that dictates a different content for different social or cultural contexts,” and he
also emphasizes that “the notion of un-dominated access is also likely to vary across
social and cultural borders” (2015, 21-22). Yet, it is still not clear that reciprocal or
intersubjective non-domination between states can be shaped through a normative
appeal to freedom as non-domination. The upshot is that without entrenching a
reciprocally non-dominating deliberative stance in the global relations between states,
an appeal to the freedom of non-domination does not necessarily solve problems of
asymmetrical power relations between states.
In this context, I will lay out the institution of democratic deliberation constituted by
reciprocal non-domination as a regulative principle that prevents the practice of
peaceful coexistence from leading to domination and thereby provides an institutional
ground for non-dominating democratic deliberation among states. Here, reciprocal
non-domination is not the first principle from which the rest of justice is derived, but
is rather a regulative principle that serves two different roles. First, it guides thinking
in the ongoing process in which states as well as their citizens consider the
requirements of global justice in the case of particular laws in specific contexts. Second,
it shows the need for principles to fill out the content of the democratic process.
Although I take seriously the suggestions of neo-Kantian republicanism with respect
to ‘justificatory power,’ articulated by Rainer Forst (2007, 13-120; 2014, 17-91), my
notion of reciprocal non-domination is not based on a transcendental right to
justification but on the condition of ‘relational power’ in which ‘subordination to a
normative or political order that cannot be reasonably justified to each state’ should
be reconsidered in terms of non-domination.
1998, 81-83) – offer an incipient groundwork for a paradigm shift in the scholarly debate over global justice
from distributive justice to freedom as non-domination (Bohman 2005 & 2007; Pettit 2010, 2014 150-187 &
2016; Laborde 2010; Ivison 2010; Laborde and Ronzoni 2016; Lovett 2016). At this juncture, the standard
republican accounts of global justice are not beset by the traditional republican distinction between civic
responsibility toward compatriots and moral commitment to humanity across borders. By the same token,
neo-Roman republicans may be seen as cosmopolitan in the sense that they are concerned with the
problem of domination experienced by non-compatriots across borders. At the same time, their theories
of global justice appear to be much more demanding than those of their liberal counterparts who place
duty to compatriots before the global duty for assistance, such as John Rawls (1999), in the sense that they
are concerned not only with decent domestic order but also with non-domination between states.
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justification for freedom as non-domination is possible. If free choice is focused on, it
is not in principle allowed to interfere with national self-determination by way of legal
sanction or global humanitarian interference. This can generate the problem of the
stronger: the stronger a state is in its relational power, the more freely it can enjoy
wielding arbitrary power. If conditions are focused on, on the other hand, then legal
sanctions or global interference concerning injustice become legitimate when the
individual state in question hinders another state or states from making an adequate
justification or when the state in question is under domination such that it cannot make
a substantiated claim for justice. Even if democratic deliberation in the global realm is
not enough to cope with a potentially dominating state, its actual practice rather than
a moral appeal to non-domination will help better promote a ‘coalition’ between states
against domination. At this juncture, reciprocal non-domination may become an
institutional ground which protects an individual state from being subjected to
another’s arbitrary will, legitimizes legal and institutional interference, and sets up the
limits of such interference.
The neo-Roman republican theorists of global justice clearly feel uneasy about the
problem of asymmetrical justificatory power between states in the global realm. This
sheds lights on the current shift in neo-Roman republican theories of global justice.
And it is quite clear to most neo-Roman republicans that there are diverse justifications
for non-domination and thereby a democratic deliberative stance in the global realm
should be set up in a non-dominating way. However, this unease with asymmetrical
justificatory power does not direct them sufficiently to go beyond ‘passive’ non-
domination in that equal treatment of different political and cultural voices in global
society is ensured in democratic deliberation. In this sense, I proposed the model of
reciprocal non-domination that can help better regulate competing justifications for
non-domination between states. The best way to overcome asymmetrical power
relations between states is not to tone down the requirements of non-domination
through a coalition of the weaker states, but to enact a democratic deliberative stance
between states. At this juncture, reciprocal non-domination as a regulative principle
can replace power politics with non-dominating cooperation, and thus form a ground
for democratic deliberation on which various political and cultural calls for justice can
be coordinated in a non-dominating way.
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