Abstract
One might question whether we need ethics at all in the debate on global poverty, or whether the demand to help seems self-evident and the choice of particular actions should be left to specialists on developmental aid. In this chapter, it is argued that the answers are yes and no: No, because we can leave particular recommendations to experts once we know precisely what we should promote—but also yes, since we must know the exact end of our (demanded) action. Empirical poverty-research without specified ends is blind; it requires the prior identification and rational justification of particular ends. This, however, is the task of ethics because no empirical science can lead to normative insights. Since it is highly controversial whether philosophical reflection can provide such a justification, a transcendental argument is outlined: if there is something good, then it is good that the good is actively supported, and if a capability to do so is a necessary requirement for this support, then it is also good that human beings have this capability. Human freedom is the paramount capability to self-determine one’s life and actions. It is an essential condition for supporting the good. It follows that a certain kind of freedom (namely the one necessary for supporting the good; here called “moral freedom”) must be regarded as a necessary end for any morality. We are obliged to help others so that they can help. The chapter ends with showing in which way the end “moral freedom” tells us why we should help the poor and can provide practical orientation for doing so.
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Notes
- 1.
World Development Indicators 2007. The World Bank. March 2007.
- 2.
Black et al. 2003.
- 3.
Human Development Report 2006. United Nations Development Programme. November 2006.
- 4.
Obviously this is simplified because the performance of a certain activity can sometimes itself be the end, e.g. if someone hikes. For the present purpose, however, the model of actions above suffices.
- 5.
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, AA IV, 421–424. This does not imply that imperfect duties are optional—they are hard demands, not mere moral afterthoughts. The same distinction is made today mostly by talking about ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ duties.
- 6.
I will not discuss it here whether this is giving rationality too much authority. After all, any attempt to argue for or against rationality being our ultimate guide is itself in the realm of reason—and thus an at least implicit acknowledgement of its uncircumventable authority (See Nagel, 1997).
- 7.
One can add further aspects of an action that are open to rational scrutiny, e.g. time and place. There can be good reasons for an agent to do something now or rather tomorrow; to do it here or rather somewhere else.
- 8.
That is why Hannah Arendt saw compassion as dangerously de-politicising. The vagueness is to a certain extent also due to the person who suffers. How much the very same situation makes someone a possible object of compassion differs and depends, for example, on how she experiences her situation subjectively, how well she expresses her suffering and in which way it is communicated.
- 9.
It should be added that transcendental arguments are faced with several problems, for example: How do we find out whether something is a necessary condition for the possibility of something else? And what can serve as a self-evident starting point? (Already Fichte supposed that Kant is presupposing too much.) A more modern objection reads: Even if we can demonstrate transcendentally that we must think that something is in a certain way, how can we be sure that it is like that—maybe the way we must think has nothing to do with how things really are. In the current debate this point has been made famously by Barry Stroud (but has been discussed earlier by Hegel).
- 10.
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, p. 46 (in Kant’s Werke, vol. 5). We find a “total reversal of positions” (Ameriks 1982, p. 211. From now on, Kant considers the categorical imperative as a Faktum der Vernunft. Whatever that exactly means (probably it is an appeal to intuition10); it is certainly no longer a transcendental argument.
- 11.
Needless to add that they can be wrong about the good, and history as much as daily life gives plenty examples of this error. But this is a different problem. It is still a necessary condition that humans can be right about the good for them to actively support it.
- 12.
In a Kantian tradition, this would amount to the autonomy of the agent, that is his or her ability to conform his or her behaviour to universal laws that obligate it. In the Grundlegung, for instance, Kant says that autonomy is “freedom of the will” (4:447), but also that the “categorical imperative … commands neither more nor less than … autonomy” (4:440).
- 13.
Obviously, this comes rather close to Kant’s second formula of the categorical imperative. “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity whether in your own person or in the person of any other never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end!” Grundlegung, p. 429 (in Kant, Kant’s Werke 1968, vol. 4).
- 14.
A related argument has been developed by Herbert Hart; who reasons that “if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free”. Cf. Hart (1967, p. 53).
- 15.
Brownsword (2007, p.13).
- 16.
Ibid, p.14.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
- 19.
Kant, Metaphysik der Sitten, AA vol. 6, p. 217.
- 20.
Equality of what? p. 220.
- 21.
Equality of what? p. 218.
- 22.
Sen (1992, p. 40).
- 23.
Sen and Drèze (1995, p. 106).
- 24.
Sen is following Adam Smith’s idea of commitment being essential to a person.
- 25.
Sen (1985), p. 206.
- 26.
See for this critique Crocker 1995, p. 167f.
- 27.
Only then are we able to operate the capability approach according to Nussbaum: “Once we identify a group of important functionings in human life, we are then in position to ask what social and political institutions are doing about them” (Nussbaum 1992, p. 214).
- 28.
Sen 1985, p. 208.
- 29.
Kant has reminded us forcefully how important it is to develop our own “talents”.
- 30.
One example of the hierarchy of goods-claims approach can be found in Michael Boylan (2004), ch. 3.
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Illies, C. (2023). Why Should We Help the Poor? Philosophy and Poverty. In: Boylan, M. (eds) International Public Health Policy and Ethics. The International Library of Bioethics, vol 106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39973-2_10
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