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The Contractarian Approach to Global Justice: A Critical Overview
From the mid-20th century a wide range of philosophical projects emerged that sought to articulate a normative architecture for global humanity—commonly referred to as “theories of global justice”. Yet by the third decade of the 21st century, most of these theories had ceased to correspond to the realities of international politics, drifting instead into utopian constructs. Yet the question remains: to what extent have theories of global justice, as such, lost their relevance? The realities of the world increasingly plunged into a state of disorder demand at least minimal normative requirements to secure basic conditions of safety. This article seeks to revisit the contractarian tradition within theories of justice. Specifically, it engages with the contributions of two key figures: Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, and his twentieth-century intellectual successor, the Canadian philosopher David Gauthier. The analysis explores the extent to which a Hobbesian approach—further developed by Gauthier—can be applied to the formulation of a global theory of justice, examining both its strengths and its weaknesses. The results of the inquiry must be judged unsatisfactory: in the absence of a global sovereign—a Hobbesian requirement—and in the absence of the rational agency presupposed by Gauthier as a condition of contract-making, the construction of a global normative framework proves unattainable. The final part of the article attempts to analyse what transformations in world order might render contractarian theories operational at the global level. Then, in conclusion, the results of the entire work are summarised.