ABSTRACT
This chapter clarifies the claims of ethical universalism and ethical particularism, and their implications for the idea of international justice. Ethical universalists and ethical particularists have often sought to reconcile the two sets of intuitions. It examines that such reconciliations have not been successful and the chapter analyses two theories. The first is the defence of nationalism by David Miller on the basis of ethical particularism, which seeks to find a place for universal obligations. The second is Brian Barry's theory of justice as impartiality, which is explicitly universalist, but which seeks to find a place for particular obligations. The chapter then argues that Barry's theory of justice as impartiality provides a superior basis for the development of an ethically satisfactory theory of international justice. The issues rose by Miller's distinction between ethical universalism and ethical particularism are treated by Barry by the distinction between second-order impartiality and first-order impartiality.
