John Rawls, the most renowned liberal political theorist of the second half of the 20th century, interpreted society as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage. Consistent with this view, he proposed that society should have a 'public system of rules defining a scheme of activities that leads men to act together so as to produce a greater sum of benefits and assigns to each certain recognized claims to a share in the proceeds.'1 He termed this public system of rules the 'basic structure' of society. To put this in friendlier terms for the reader, we can define this basic structure as the set of institutions that facilitate cooperation within society.

Like any other idea in political theory, this one rests on certain assumptions. Note that this cooperative venture is not universal. Therefore, according to Rawls, there would be some sacrifices inherent in cooperative endeavors, such as individuals restricting their own liberty in ways that are necessary to yield advantages for all, which cannot be observed at a global level.

However, assumptions and procedures used to argue for certain ideas are also a source of dispute, just like ideas themselves. According to Charles Beitz, another renowned political theorist, there is no reason for the idea of a cooperative venture to be limited to the level of society.2 He therefore contributed to the development of a research agenda that is now widely recognized as global justice.

I will not discuss the reasons why Beitz believes this, as this would involve delving into some methodological aspects that are not relevant here. Instead, I will simply say that I agree with him that, based on how Rawls presented his ideas, there is no reason to restrict ourselves to the societal level. In other words, if Rawls did not extrapolate his idea of society to the global level, it was due to his own moderation, not because it was logically implausible.

Unfortunately, just because something is logically plausible does not mean it is empirically feasible. In what follows, I will present some arguments from Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene to explain why we cannot expect the same type of cooperation at societal and global levels.3

In Moral Tribes, Greene tells us that morality is a collection of devices that promote and stabilize cooperative behavior. This is of crucial importance since certain things cannot be accomplished alone and our natural self-interest can hinder cooperation if it is not filtered by this collection of devices. Therefore, in order to overcome the tensions between Me and Us, we biologically developed the means to acquire the moral machinery needed to make the collective interest triumph over the individual interest. In other words, individuals belonging to a community have developed a set of mechanisms that partially align their interests with those of the community.

We must pause for a moment on the emphasized words. Most cooperative behavior is of an interesting kind and works as a means of overcoming the me-usUs divide by temporarily aligning individual and collective interests. Therefore, we should not take cooperative devices for granted, as they can erode.

But more importantly, morality is a biological adaptation that enables cooperation between individuals within a single community. We evolved to cooperate only with people belonging to our own group. In other words, we are designed to cooperate within groups, rather than between them. Evolution is a competitive process, and the principles of evolution by natural selection are inconsistent with universal cooperation.

This biological adaptation, which pits us against them, has profound implications. The natural solution that we developed to overcome the Me-Us divide is now part of a new problem: the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, which is the inability to develop common thinking that would enable cooperation between groups. Therefore, depending on the level at which we are, morality acts as both a solution and a problem.

Greene also provides an account of how our moral machinery often fails us. There are two sources of that obstacle to intergroup cooperation that blend in different ways. The first is the almost constant selfishness at the group level, that is, prioritizing Us over Them—a phenomenon better known as tribalism. The second is the genuine difference in values and terms of cooperation between groups, which goes beyond tribal selfishness. In other words, groups have genuine cultural differences that extend beyond competing interests or the emphasis placed on certain values—these cultures are expressions of distinctive values.

All of this causes problems when groups attempt to work together to solve a problem that goes beyond their own scope, such as global warming, global poverty, or environmental degradation. Greene provides an account of the biases individuals incur that represent their group's culture and compares how different groups judge the same scenario. However, he is not pessimistic about these psychological obstacles. On the contrary, he is confident that a better understanding of moral psychology will help us to overcome many of these obstacles.

I agree with him on that optimism, as do many other political theorists. Indeed, for at least the second half of the 20th century, many political theorists have been systematically addressing these sources of conflict in the hope of developing a modus vivendi. The idea of it is simple. It basically says that in the face of strong value pluralism, that is, the coexistence of multiple incommensurable, non-reducible, or non-derivable values that are not in harmony, the best we can aspire to is not liberal institutions, but practical arrangements or compromises aimed at peaceful coexistence between groups.4 Naturally, these arrangements and compromises are not universal and everlasting but provisional and non-ideal. And if they happen to be liberal, as I would like them to be, they are so for the cultures of the groups involved.

Moral Tribes doesn’t reveal all there is to know about morality, but it provides a foundation that anyone working to solve problems of cooperation between groups should bear in mind. For example, how do we plan to overcome conflict and cooperate using the language of fairness when we know that it can exacerbate conflicts due to our tendency to be biased? What should the starting point be for addressing global or regional problems that emphasize the divide between us and them, such as the climate crisis, the migration crisis, or global poverty?

Although we are tribal creatures, we can solve problems in ways that do not trigger this natural tendency. Instead of trying to establish cooperation between large groups or societies by extrapolating fanciful ideas, we should first consider the factors that impede it and work from that. I know this is a modest suggestion compared to those who advocate global justice, but we should give it a try after so many unfulfilled expectations.

References

1 Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition. Belknap Press.
2 Beitz, C. (1979). Political Theory and International Relations. Princeton University Press.
3 Greene, J. D. (2013). Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. Atlantic Books.
4 Gray, J. (1998). Where Pluralists and Liberals Part Company. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 6(1), 17–36.