Thinking About the World: Philosophy and Sociology

In recent decades the world has grown together in ways in which it had never been before. This integration is linked to a greatly expanded public and collective awareness of global integration and interdependence. Academics across the social sciences and humanities have reacted to the expanded realities and perceptions, trying to make sense of the world within the confines of their disciplines. In sociology, since the 1970, notions of the world as a society have become more and more prominent. John Meyer, among others, has put forward, theoretically and empirically, a general world-society approach. In philosophy, much more recently, Mathias Risse has proposed the grounds-of-justice approach. Even though one is a social-scientific approach and the other a philosophical one, Meyer’s world society approach and Risse’s grounds-of-justice approach have much in common. This essay brings these two approaches into a conversation.