In the dissertation I ask: what are the obstacles that prevent us from actualizing transnational justice? What kind of political institutions, both national and transnational, can moderate those obstacles, and, at least, fulfill our transnational moral obligations to a minimalist degree?

The dissertation offers an alternative account of transnational conflicts to the common wisdom that it is the Hobbesian struggle for infinite power to insure security that makes our practice of transnational justice impossible. I instead argue that, despite various original causes of transnational conflicts, our transnational conflicts become irresolvable partly due to our attempts to resolve those transnational conflicts in terms of morality and justice. Practical struggles become more irresolvable when they turn into moral struggles. Practicing justice, i.e. the rigorous moral demand on others to return their due, is always one of the deepest sources of our conflict. This thesis is particularly developed through an interpretation of Hegel's account of the moral struggles and pathologies of modern moral subjects, who perpetually appeal to their own abyss of moral conscience to determine what is right and good. The problem of moral indeterminacy is demonstrated in Thomas Pogge's cosmopolitanism and Iris Young's critical account of transnational justice. A renewed interpretation of the origin of the Westphalia system exemplifies the irresolvable modern moral conflicts in transnational contexts.

In order to moderate the disruptive forces of modern moral subjects in their transnational moral struggles, I develop an idea of political community from two primary sources. I adopt the idea of unitary political personality from the concept of sovereignty, and also adopt Hegel’s ethical perspective of subjectivity and institution. The kind of political community I develop, which I call “peoples as ethical settlements,” can join with one another into an enlarged ethical settlement, that is, an enlarged people-union of peoples. Under such enlarged, ethical, and unitary personality, peoples can maintain their independence, and practice transnational justice to a minimalist degree without incurring moral pathologies and irresolvable struggles. However, once a sharp moral disagreement arises to an extent that the constitutive peoples no longer share an ethical settlement, the extended federated people will either collapse or be taken over by a strong state. The later incidence can be demonstrated by the Civil War of the United States of America. The future of the current European Union will also depend on how the European states can successfully share an ethical settlement, which shall require a long time of sedimentation and cultivation of the related conceptions and dispositions. In this regard, the dissertation offers not so much a solution to the issues of transnational justice as a diagnosis of its difficulties.