Cosmologies and Global Justice: Perspectives from Outside the West

In recent years, the global justice debate has extended beyond the confines of the nature and scope of the nation-state system which is conventionally traced back to the Peace of Westphalia. In particular, fresh insights from several other schools of Non-Western thought raised awareness that a proper treatment of global justice requires much more than just a theoretical discussion of the nation-state system. They seek to find an alternative system the normative foundations of which can be accepted pluriversally as a set of shared minimalist regulative principles for harmonious relationship while not denying the particularities of all cosmologies. A cosmology here refers to sets of normative epistemological and ontological claims about the origins of the cosmos and our place in it (Blaney and Tickner 2017, Behr and Shani 2021). Based on these considerations, this panel will discuss the possible contributions of cosmological traditions from outside the West. Specifically, first, we analyze substantive contributions to the global justice debate from the perspectives of non-Western cultures. Second, epistemological contributions questioning the conditions of validity of contemporary theories of global justice and the terms on which non-Western cosmologies can meaningfully intervene in the global justice debate.