Abstract

According to Thomas Pogge’s theory of human rights, those of us in the developed world have a negative duty to the global poor. In other words, our responsibility to them is not merely to help them but to stop harming them by hoarding natural resources and imposing unfair institutional structures. I argue that Hegel would agree that we have a responsibility to the global poor and that he would also agree with some of Pogge’s institutional diagnosis. Hegel thought that civil society, as a new institution in his time, generated new responsibilities; he would, I argue, have thought the same about a globalized civil society. I discuss recognition as a possible foundation for this obligation and emphasize Hegel’s preference for a representative structure based on economics rather than geography as part of a possible solution.