Abstract
In this article, part of a symposium devoted to Hennie Lötter’s Poverty, Ethics and Justice, my aims are threefold. First, I present a careful reading of Lötter’s original and compelling central conception of the nature of poverty as the inability to ‘obtain adequate economic resources….to maintain physical health and engage in social activities distinctive of human beings in their respective societies’. After motivating this view, particularly in comparison to other salient accounts of poverty, I, second, raise some objections to it, regarding relativistic implications that it has. Third, I propose another, more universalist conception of the nature of poverty, which is inspired by some of Lötter’s other remarks and which is all the stronger. According to this view, people are more poor, the less they can obtain adequate economic resources to pursue a wide array of finally valuable activities and states characteristic of human beings. I conclude by briefly pointing out how this view merits critical comparison with related views, such as Martha Nussbaum’s Capabilities Approach.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Robeyns (2005) for someone who entertains the idea that poverty is a lack of resources, and not merely wrong insofar as it is.
Although Peter Singer defines absolute poverty in terms of the inability to meet needs (1993, p. 220), it is not clear that he coherently can, given his adherence to preference utilitarianism. Or at the very least, he must think of the wrongness of poverty in terms of preference dissatisfaction. And against the hedonist instance of utilitarianism, surely one would count as poor if one died a painless death as a result of lacking economic resources. To be poor is not merely to suffer, even if suffering often accompanies poverty.
Towards the end of the book Lötter does want a moralized conception of poverty (see, e.g., 2011, pp. 270–271), but I gather that he intends it to supplement (and not supplant) the initial, non-moralized conception.
However, the phrase ‘or live in conditions that devalue their status as human beings in meaningful ways’ might open the door to a reading that squares with my non-moralized construal.
Lötter at some points suggests that virtually everyone, including the poor themselves, have a duty to fight poverty (see, e.g., 2011, p. 4).
Note that Amartya Sen’s (1999) version of capability theory, which has also been extremely influential, does not tie the relevant capacities to ones constitute of an objective human good.
References
Dworkin, Ronald. 2000. Sovereign virtue: The theory and practice of equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Edward, Peter. 2006. The ethical poverty line: A moral definition of absolute poverty. In Poverty in focus, ed. International Poverty Centre, 14–16. Brasilia: United Nations Development Programme.
European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN). 2014. Poverty: What is it? http://www.eapn.eu/en/what-is-poverty/poverty-what-is-it. Accessed 10 April 2014.
Graf, Gunter, and Gottfried Schweiger. 2013. The philosophical evaluation of poverty. Salzburger Beiträge zur Sozialethik 3: 1–21.
Grayling, AC. 2013. What is poverty? Prospect Magazine 19 November. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/a-c-grayling-what-is-poverty/. Accessed 10 April 2014.
Lötter, Hennie. 2011. Poverty, ethics and justice. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Marx, Karl. 1844a. Letter on James Mill. In Karl Marx: Selected writings, Rev. edn., ed. and trans: David McLellan, 124–133. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, Karl. 1844b. Economic and philosophical manuscripts. In Karl Marx: selected writings, Rev. edn., ed. and trans: David McLellan, 83–120. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Metz, Thaddeus. 2000. Arbitrariness, justice, and respect. Social Theory and Practice 26: 25–45.
Metz, Thaddeus. 2013. Meaning in life: An analytic study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha. 2011. Creating capabilities: The human development approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 1999. A theory of justice, Rev edn., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Robeyns, Ingrid. 2005. Assessing global poverty and inequality: Income, resources, and capabilities. Metaphilosophy 36: 30–49.
Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shaw, Beverley. 2008. Poverty: Absolute or relative? Journal of Applied Philosophy 5: 27–36.
Singer, Peter. 1993. Rich and poor. In Practical ethics, 2nd edn., ed. Peter Singer, 218–246. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Townsend, Peter. 2006. What is poverty? An historical perspective. In Poverty in focus, ed. International Poverty Centre, 5–6. Brasilia: United Nations Development Programme.
United Nations Millenium Project. 2006. Fast facts: The faces of poverty. http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/resources/fastfacts_e.htm. Accessed 10 April 2014.
Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett. 2009. The spirit level: Why more equal societies almost always do better. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
World Bank. 2014a. Poverty headcount ratio at $2 a day (PPP). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.2DAY. Accessed 10 April 2014.
World Bank. 2014b. Poverty overview. http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview. Accessed 10 April 2014.
Acknowledgments
For comments on an earlier version of this article, I thank participants in a workshop devoted to Hennie Lötter’s Poverty, Ethics and Justice held at the University of Johannesburg in November 2013, especially Gillian Brock, Daryl Glaser, Hennie Lötter, Darrel Moellendorf and Brian Penrose. This work is based on research supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa, and I acknowledge that the opinions, findings and conclusions expressed in this NRF supported publication are those of the author, and that the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Metz, T. The Nature of Poverty as an Inhuman Condition. Res Publica 22, 327–342 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-016-9318-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-016-9318-1