My Thesis is provisionally entitled 'Toward a Reasonable Cosmopolitanism'. The overall aim of the is to show that a cosmopolitan theory of global justice can provide a coherent and stable account of both basic human rights and special obligations and relationships.

I will do this by contrasting a non-cosmopolitan account, that of David Miller, with a cosmopolitan account developed from Brian Barry’s theory of justice as impartiality.

Miller’s account is one of the fullest and most developed of contemporary non-cosmopolitan approaches to global justice and therefore is an opponent that cosmopolitanism needs to be able to overcome. Miller’s central commitment is to liberal nationalism, but out of this he seeks to provide an account of basic human rights. The thesis will argue that Miller’s account of human rights is unstable, and that this instability stems from his commitment to contextualism about justice. Contextualism will be contrasted with universalism, and the thesis will show that for a full account of global justice universalism should be preferred.

The main obstacle to a universalist account is its perceived inability to provide a coherent account of special relationships and obligations. The thesis will show that by following Brian Barry’s theory of justice as impartiality we can develop a universalist cosmopolitan theory that has no difficulty providing such an account, and can furthermore provide a stable account of basic human rights. Cosmopolitanism based on justice as impartiality will therefore be shown to be a better alternative to Miller’s contextualist non-cosmopolitan theory of global justice.

For the first two years of my PhD I have been lucky to be supervised by Dr Chris Bennett and Professor Leif Wenar. In September 2008 Leif will be leaving Sheffield to take up the Chair of Ethics in the School of Law, King's College London. For the final year of my PhD Dr Garrett Brown will be taking over secondary supervisor duties.

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