Abstract

The idea of empowerment has gained a significant role in the discourse of poverty. I outline a restricted conception of empowerment inspired by Kant’s idea of rightful honour. According to this conception, empowerment consists in enabling individuals to assert their own human rights (juridical empowerment). I apply this conception to impoverished persons and argue that it is crucial to their self-respect, their so-called ‘power-[from-]within,’ and their political agency, and has a teleological primacy regarding our efforts to reduce poverty. I also defend the idea that there is a moral right to this form of empowerment and a corresponding duty to empower the impoverished as rights-asserters. Juridical empowerment will be compatible with a pluralism of substantive accounts of the moral wrongs of poverty and with broader conceptions of empowerment.