ABSTRACT
A theory of international justice must at one and the same time provide a conception of how world society could and should develop and the principles and procedures of justice which are supposed to be realised in it. What keeps this inquiry from being hopelessly circular is that we start out with views about what problems a theory of justice ought to solve and thus the objectives we want to achieve, and we have available facts and theories about the international world and about the needs, desires and loyalties of individuals in it. We can therefore engage in the exercise of making our moral theory fit the facts or ordering the world to fit the theory. That is, we can try to determine whether our moral ideas could prevail in the world as it is or as it could become, or formulate a view of justice which does fit the world as it is or could be. I will take it that what it means for a view of international justice to be acceptable includes the requirement that the just world be achieved peacefully and by just means. There are good reasons, as I have argued, for insisting on this condition, and no good reason for thinking that the logic of international relations or of international capitalism makes it impossible to satisfy.
