The corresponding approach to norms for the international arena rests on a variety of building blocks: first on a doctrine of human rights, understood as minimal conditions for the legitimacy of social organisations; second on a conception of transnational political order which throws light, among other things, on the legitimacy and authority of international legal systems (including those founded on international law) and examines the conditions for fair participation in transnational governance; and third on a conception of transnational distributive justice which formulates our obligations regarding the global (re-)distribution of opportunities and goods. The goal of the research project is to consolidate these building blocks into a substantive theory of global justice. This also calls for particular attention to the analysis of global relations of responsibility, for instance to the question of how arguments concerning justice can be distinguished from other moral arguments in determining relations of responsibility between individuals and groups.
A second focus is constituted by fundamental methodological questions concerning the relation between morality and politics, in particular concerning the application of normative theories to nonideal conditions. The tensions between realism and utopianism, to which normative political theory is always susceptible, are especially pronounced in the field of International Political Theory. Against this background it becomes particularly urgent to enquire whether the primary role of theories of justice is to formulate principles whose application would bring about completely just relations, or whether our primary concern should be to develop more realistic theories of justice which are capable of orienting political actors because they not only identify the conditions which are actually achievable (in collaboration with the social sciences) but also gauge their relative merits by standards of justice. An additional task is to clarify the relations between these two approaches to normative political philosophy. We will attempt to throw light on these methodological questions concerning the relation to practice and the applicability of theories of justice in close collaboration with the Centre for Advanced Studies 'Justitia Amplificata'.
A third focus lies on the analysis of normativity in general, specifically of normativity in the moral and political domain. What constitutes the distinctive binding character of moral and political norms and on what is founded? Here we will examine the connection between genesis and validity as this is asserted, for instance, in the ideal of democratic self-determination.
