scholarly journals Do We Have a Negative Duty Towards the Global Poor? Thomas Pogge on Global Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Pierik
Keyword(s):  
Global Justice ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Negative Duty

Thomas Pogge’s Conception of Taking the Global Institutional Order as the Object of Justice Assessments

2020 ◽  
pp. 301-317
Author(s):  
Arthur Chin
Keyword(s):  
Global Justice ◽  
Global Level ◽  
World Government ◽  
Institutional Approach ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
World Poverty ◽  
Negative Duty ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Domestic Level ◽  
Institutional Order

Might our reasoning about social justice at the domestic level—for instance, with regard to the kind of objects that our justice assessments are immediately concerned with and the content of principles employed—properly diverge from its counterpart at the global level? This is the question around which much of the current global justice debate revolves. This chapter is devoted to examining and arguing that the answers provided by Thomas Pogge for the most part retain their plausibility despite the barrage of criticism they have provoked. While Pogge is particularly renowned for his contention that existing world poverty constitutes an injustice that implicates ordinary citizens of affluent societies in negative duty violations, this chapter will not be directly weighing in on this debate. Rather, it seeks to examine a fundamental commitment in Pogge’s justice theorizing: if we are to take the basic institutional scheme of a domestic society as the primary subject of justice in virtue of its profound and pervasive effects, then consistency requires us to subject the global institutional scheme to the same type of justice analysis, and to devise a corresponding set of principles governing its design. Through clarifying the meaning and implications of this proposition, this chapter hopes to bring out a more lucid and unified reading of Pogge’s institutional approach to justice theorizing, one that is both appealing and remains viable in the absence of a world government.

Contributing and Benefiting: Two Grounds for Duties to the Victims of Injustice

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Anwander
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Positive Duty ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Negative Duty ◽  
Harmful Effects ◽  
Do So

Contrasting his own position with that of those who conceive the moral challenge of global poverty in terms of a positive duty to help, Thomas Pogge suggests that “we may be failing to fulfill our stringent negative duty not to uphold injustice, not to contribute to or profit from [emphasis added] the unjust impoverishment of others” (p. 197). We should conceive of our individual donations and of possible institutionalized initiatives to eradicate poverty not as helping the poor but “as protecting them from the effects of global rules whose injustice benefits us and is our responsibility” (p. 23, emphasis added). Pogge also claims that such activities should be understood in terms of compensation: “The word ‘compensate’ is meant to indicate that how much one should be willing to contribute toward reforming unjust institutions and toward mitigating the harms they cause depends on how much one is contributing to, and benefiting from, their maintenance” (p. 50, emphasis added).In characterizing wrongful involvement in an unjust social order and the compensatory duties that arise from it, Pogge refers to the terms contribution/responsibility as well as to benefit/profit (the latter are used interchangeably). The first of these factors is unobjectionable: we can take it for granted that there is a negative duty not to contribute to injustice and that those who are responsible for harmful institutions should compensate their victims. I want to raise doubts, however, about the role that Pogge assigns to benefiting from injustice in the determination of our duties toward the victims of injustice. I shall do so by challenging his claim that there is a negative duty not to benefit from injustice, and that the role that benefiting from injustice plays in determining our duties to work toward reforming unjust practices and mitigating their harmful effects is best understood in terms of compensation.

scholarly journals Poverty Alleviation, Global Justice, and the Real World

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Brown
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Poverty Alleviation ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Global Poverty ◽  
Peter Singer ◽  
The Real ◽  
Past Work ◽  
Thomas Pogge

The modern literature on responding to global poverty is over fifty years old and has attracted the attention of some of the most prominent analytical political theorists of the age, including Brian Barry, Charles Beitz, Simon Caney, Thomas Pogge, John Rawls, and Peter Singer. Yet in spite of this extraordinary concentration of brainpower, the problem of global poverty has quite clearly not been solved or, indeed, adequately defined. We are therefore entitled to ask two questions of any new contribution to this literature: first, what does it have to offer that past work does not; and second, what reason is there to think that, this time, it will truly make a difference. These questions will be posed below, but before undertaking this task it may be useful to offer an overview of the field, with particular attention to why the problem of global poverty seems so intractable.

Global Distributive Justice: An Egalitarian Perspective

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 139-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Fabre
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Basic Needs ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
National Boundaries

A good deal of political theory over the last fifteen years or so has been shaped by the realization that one cannot, and ought not, consider the distribution of resources within a country in isolation from the distribution of resources between countries. Thus, thinkers such as Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge advocate extensive global distributive policies; others, such as Charles Jones and David Miller, explicitly reject the view that egalitarian principles of justice should apply globally and claim that national communities have only duties to help other countries be viable economically and meet the basic needs of their members. In the global justice debate, pretty much all parties acknowledge that we have obligations of distributive justice to for-eigners. The question is how strong those obligations are, and in particular whether national boundaries can make any difference to the distribution of resources between members of different countries.

scholarly journals Pogge, poverty, and war

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-469
Author(s):  
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Poor People ◽  
Positive Duty ◽  
Ceteris Paribus ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Rich People ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Negative Duty ◽  
Economic Injustice ◽  
Do So

According to Thomas Pogge, rich people do not simply violate a positive duty of assistance to help the global poor; rather, they violate a negative duty not to harm them. They do so by imposing an unjust global economic structure on poor people. Assuming that these claims are correct, it follows that, ceteris paribus, wars waged by the poor against the rich to resist this imposition are morally equivalent to wars waged in self-defense against military aggression. Hence, if self-defense against military aggression is just, then, ceteris paribus, so are defensive wars against the imposition of economic injustice. While I do not think Pogge’s analysis of the causes of global poverty is correct, I defend these inferences against various challenges.

scholarly journals On the Universal Power of Socioeconomic Rights: A Comparison Between Thomas Pogge and Rainer Forst

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Fabio Coacci ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Practical Implication ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Socioeconomic Rights ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Negative Duty ◽  
The One ◽  
Institutional Order ◽  
Theoretical Conceptualization

Introduction. This article investigates the universal power of socioeconomic rights assessing their theoretical conceptualization and practical implication. Methods. Taking theoretical and empirical research into account – at the level of public ethics and political theory – the article carries out a comparative analysis of the elements of global economic justice theory, moral universalism and institutional understanding of human rights of Thomas Pogge and the critical theory of political and social justice and the moral constructivist conception of human rights of Rainer Forst. Analysis. On the one hand, Pogge’s cosmopolitan approach underlines serious noncompliance of socioeconomic rights at the global level because of the unjust distribution of rights and duties enforced by the current global institutional order. In this vein, the protection of socioeconomic rights is conceived as a (moral) negative duty not to deprive people of secure access to a basic human rights object, and socioeconomic rights, by imposing upon them unjust coercive social institutions. On the other hand, Forst’s perspective maintains that each right needs to be constructed on the very basic moral right to reciprocal and general justification which is conceived as the most universal and basic claim of every human being. Results. Drawing on the above-mentioned outlooks on socioeconomic rights, the universal power of socioeconomic rights is assessed in light of the satisfaction of universal basic needs, whose object is also the object of socioeconomic rights – a ‘conditio sine qua non’ for a worthwhile life – and the justification of the assigned duties at the global level.

What Do We Owe the Global Poor?

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Satz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Causal Contribution ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
World Poverty ◽  
The Developed Countries ◽  
Negative Duty

In his provocative book World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge employs two distinct argumentative strategies. The first is ecumenical: Pogge makes powerful arguments for redressing world poverty that aim to appeal to persons with divergent views regarding its causes, and also for the nature and extent of our obligations to the global poor. This is an extremely important part of his book: World Poverty and Human Rights argues that on any reasonable moral theory and across a wide range of views of the ultimate causes of world poverty, we will be seen to have obligations to the world's poor. Pogge's ecumenical argument shows that one does not have to accept a principle of global equality of resources in order to conclude that we have a general obligation to aid other human beings in severe need. I will discuss this strategy of argument at the end of my essay.In his second and main argumentative strategy, Pogge defends a distinctive normative and empirical perspective. For, at the heart of the book is the thesis that we in the developed countries have special obligations to end world poverty because we have significantly contributed to its existence. Pogge argues for a causal contribution principle, which holds that we are morally responsible for world poverty because and to the extent that we have caused it.Pogge also argues that our obligations not to harm others apply universally and are stronger than the obligations we have to provide aid. In fact, on Pogge's view global justice involves solely this negative duty—a duty not to inflict harm on others. The central innovation of the book is to defend a normative premise typically associated with libertarianism—that we have strong duties not to harm but only weak duties to benefit people we have not harmed—and conjoin it with an empirical claim to generate an argument for radical global redistribution.Although there is much else of interest in World Poverty and Human Rights, particularly Pogge's specific policy proposals to diminish global poverty, the causal contribution thesis and the identification of a duty not to harm as the fundamental principle of justice arguably form its intellectual core and central innovations. In this comment, I will critique both Pogge's use of the causal contribution principle as well as his attempt to derive all of our obligations to the global poor from the need to refrain from harming others.

scholarly journals Declaring the Global Economy a Status Confessionis?

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-219
Author(s):  
Menno R. Kamminga
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
The World ◽  
Economic Foundation ◽  
Negative Duty

This article revisits theologian Ulrich Duchrow’s three-decade-old use of the Protestant notion of status confessionis to denounce the capitalist global economy. Scholars quickly dismissed Duchrow’s argument; however, philosopher Thomas Pogge has developed a remarkable “negative duty”—based critique of the current global economic order that might help revitalize Duchrow’s position. The article argues that sound reasons exist for the churches to declare the contemporary world economy a—provisionally termed—status confessionis minor. After explaining the inadequacy of Duchrow’s original position and summarizing Pogge’s account, the article develops a twofold argument. First, Pogge’s in-depth inquiry into the world economy gives Duchrow’s call for a status confessionis a strong yet narrowing economic foundation. Second, to declare the world economy a status confessionis minor is theological-ethically justifiable if the limited though indispensable “prophetic” significance of doing so is acknowledged. Thus, Duchrow’s approach is justified, but only partially.

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