ABSTRACT
Now that the stalemate caused in world affairs by the Cold War has ended and problems of environmental degradation and resource distribution loom so large, the time has come, so it seems, to make the establishment of a just international world order into a political priority. The way in which a philosopher can contribute to the achievement of this objective seems obvious. What is needed is a well-grounded, universally acceptable conception of international justice. There are, however, a number of serious difficulties which stand in the way of performing this task, or even beginning it. Two forms of scepticism come to the surface as soon as the topic of international justice is introduced. The first is a doubt about whether international justice is possible at all, whether any conception of justice, however well grounded, could have much or any influence on world politics. The second is a doubt about whether the philosopher, or anyone else, will ever be able to come up with an acceptable answer to the question: what is international justice? I will explore in this section what these doubts mean and why they exist.
