Online research in philosophy

Pogge’s writings on international distributive justice, some of them now collected in ‘World Poverty and Human Rights’ (2002),1 exhibit a masterly interplay of moral argumentation and empirical data. In this contribution, I cannot do justice to both and will therefore focus on Pogge’s moral arguments, the origins of which are to be found in the legal philosophies of Kant and Rawls. Contrary to these philosophers, however, Pogge does argue in favor of an institutionalized global order. That is, he argues, what justice demands. On this point, he sharply differs from his predecessors. Although Rawls criticizes Kant because of his adherence to a ‘comprehensive’, metaphysical viewpoint, he follows Kant in distinguishing between several layers of justice, especially between justice on the domestic, national level and justice on the international, global scale (adding local justice as a third layer). In comparison with both Kant’s and Rawls’s views, Pogge pleads for a revolutionary transformation of the ‘law of peoples’, in which the ‘statist’ approach is rejected altogether and a much more utopian stance is adopted. Here, I intend to bring the main arguments together: Kant’s and Rawls’s pleas for international justice on the one hand and Pogge’s arguments for global justice on the other. By doing so, I hope to contribute to answering the question whether Pogge’s views represent an unjustifiable ‘moral doctrine’, unfit for the highly complex international society of societies or an utopian view in need of being endorsed by many. This then sets my agenda: I will first briefly summarize Kant’s and Rawls’s arguments in favor of a layered structure of ‘international’ justice. Second, I will briefly summarize Pogge’s arguments in favor of ‘global’ justice. The contrast between those views will then enable me to raise the most difficult question: if the requirement of global justice is true in theory, why is it so difficult to apply it in practice? Do these difficulties point at the nature of morality itself..

I argue that existing views in the political equality debate are inadequate. I propose an alternative approach to equality and argue its superiority to the competing approaches. I apply the approach to some issues in global justice relating to global poverty and to the inability of some countries to develop as they would like. In this connection I discuss institutions of international trade, sovereign debt and global reserves and I focus particularly on the WTO, IMF and World Bank.

This paper provides foundations for the first comprehensive nonideal theory of justice. §1 of this paper argues that whichever ideal theory turns out to be correct – whether ideal justice is fairness, libertarian, pluralist, contextualist, communitarian; etc. – nonideal justice is nonideal fairness. Specifically, §1 shows that literallyevery debate within nonideal theory – debates about war, affirmative action, etc. – is fundamentally a debate about what is fair under unjust conditions. The question then is what “nonideal fairness” is. In order to answer this question, §2 of this paper constructs a new theoretical apparatus: a moral model that (I argue) any ideal theorist can accept, whatever their doctrinal leanings, as a model of nonideal fairness. The model I construct is broadly based upon John Rawls’ “original position.” It is crucial to emphasize “broadly.” I prefer to call the model I construct the “nondenominational NNOP” (or NNOP) because, as we will see, the model can incorporate any ideal theory – for example, libertarian ideals, pluralist ideals, communitarian ideals; etc. – into its very structure, modeling nonideal fairness relative to that theory of ideals. §3 then shows that the parties to the NNOP should aim to obtain several “nonideal primary goods.” Finally, §4 argues that the NNOP generates a General Principle of Nonideal Theory, and five lexically ordered corollary principles, that together comprise a compelling comprehensive nonideal theory of justice – a theory that can be usefully extended to any area of nonideal theory, including the justice of war, affirmative action, etc.

Until recently, Rawlsian orthodoxy held that John Rawls’ ideal theory of justice as fairness can be straightforwardly extended to nonideal social conditions. A. John Simmons has demonstrated this view to be false. Rawls lacks any analysis of transitional fairness. Simmons, however, is skeptical about the possibility of constructing a comprehensive theory of transitional fairness. I show that such a theory is possible by beginning a project that Rawls once suggested: systematically extending his “original position” to nonideal theory. I construct a nonideal theoretic original position on the basis of Rawls’ arguments, showing how the parties to it ought to prioritize a special class of “nonideal theoretic primary goods” over Rawls’ principles and priority relations. Finally, I show that the parties should agree to a general principle which distributes these goods to the maximum advantage of the most oppressed.

In World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge argues that the global rich have a duty to eradicate severe poverty in the world. The novelty of Pogges approach is to present this demand as stemming from basic commands which are negative rather than positive in nature: the global rich have an obligation to eradicate the radical poverty of the global poor not because of a norm of beneficence asking them to help those in need when they can at little cost to themselves, but because of their having violated a principle of justice not to unduly harm others by imposing on them a coercive global order that makes their access to the objects of their human right to subsistence insecure. In this paper, I claim that although Pogge is right in arguing that negative duties are crucial in an account of global justice, he is wrong in saying that they are the only ones that are crucial. Harming the global poor by causing their poverty provides a sufficient but not a necessary condition for the global rich to have a duty of justice to assist them. After engaging in a critical analysis of Pogges argument, I conclude by suggesting the need for a robust conception of cosmopolitan solidarity that includes positive duties of assistance which are not mere duties of charity, but enforceable ones of justice.

This paper presents a reconstruction of and some constructive comments on Thomas Pogge’s conception of global justice. Using Imre Lakatos’s notion of a research program, the paper identifies Pogge’s “hard core” and “protective belt” claims regarding the scope of fundamental principles of justice, the object and structure of duties of global justice, the explanation of world poverty, and the appropriate reforms to the existing global order. The paper recommends some amendments to Pogge’s program in each of the four areas.

This paper systematically extends John Rawls' original position to nonideal theory, showing how parties to a "nonideal original position" ought to prioritize four "nonideal primary goods" over Rawls' principles and priority relations, and then agree to five lexically ordered principles of nonideal theory for distributing those goods. Finally, these five principles are shown to fare very well in reflective equilibrium, cohering with a number of pretheoretic moral intuitions.

Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: The complexity of the debate on global justice -- Part I: Beyond Global Poverty -- 2. Basic positive duties of justice: A contractualist defense -- 3. Negative duties and the libertarian challenge -- 4. The feasibility of global poverty eradication in nonideal circumstances -- Part II: Toward Global Equality -- 5. Humanist versus associativist accounts of global equality -- 6. A humanist defense of global equality -- 7. The feasibility of global equality -- 8. Conclusion: Exploring responsibilities of global justice -- Bibliography -- Index.