Formulating a Minimalist Morality for a New Planetary Order: Alternative Cultural Perspectives

The Westphalian model of international relations has given us a zero-sum game of winners and losers that has proven to be ineffective in addressing the pressing issues of our times. Philosopher Zhao Tingyang has argued that by conceptualizing international relations from the planetary perspective of tianxia, we can develop a sense of “worldness” that at once acknowledges the plurality of moral ideals defining of the world’s cultures and seeks practical ways to formulate a shared morality for the solidarity needed to bring the world’s people together. In this spirit, political theorist Michael Walzer, in his Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, wants “to endorse the politics of difference and, at the same time, to describe and defend a certain sort of universalism.” For Walzer “thin” morality does not mean minor or emotionally shallow morality; on the contrary, thin and intensity come together as “morality close to the bone.”

Turning to alternative philosophies, the contributors to this volume seek to move beyond liberal thinking on a minimalist ethic to include other cultural values―those of the Confucian, Buddhist, Indian, Islamic, Ubuntu, Japanese, European, and Jewish traditions. In order to reconceive of the world as a world, these scholars seek to formulate an answer to the contemporary challenge of a fragmented and failing Westphalian “internationality,” and in so doing, to offer possible conceptions of a shared and practicable morality sorely needed at a planetary scale.

Roger T. Ames is Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University, senior academic advisor of the Berggruen Research Center at Peking University, and professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Hawai‘i.

Jin Young Lim is a doctoral candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Steven Y. H. Yang is Tianxia Project Consultant at the Berggruen China Center.

Jin Y. Park is William Fraser McDowell Chair Professor of Philosophy and Religion and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University.