Green Liberalism and Sustainable Transitions

One idea salient in the African and East Asian philosophical traditions is that the right sort of socio-political interaction would be similar to the intuitive ways that family members ought to relate to each other. Applying this perspective to economic and ecological inequalities, this chapter articulates some principles implicit in healthy familial relationships, shows what they entail for certain aspects of distributive justice at the national level, and contends that the implications are plausible relative to competing theories such as utilitarianism, Rawlsianism, and the Capabilities Approach. It concludes that reflection on familial norms indicates that certain goods of relationship and of life should be central to what the state distributes and that it should distribute them in a ‘balanced’ manner.