On the real world duties imposed on us by human rights

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 466-487

  Stemplowska, Zofia ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84873998536     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2009.01466.x     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), chaps. 2, 7.
2. Henceforth: WPHR.
3. For arguments challenging the distinction see, e.g., James Nickel, "Poverty and Rights," Philosophical Quarterly 55 (2005): 385-402;
4. Elizabeth Ashford, "The Alleged Dichotomy between Positive and Negative Duties of Justice," in Charles Beitz and Robert Goodin (eds.), Global Basic Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). There is no general right not to be harmed or right to be aided; when I mention such rights I assume that harm would be wrongful and aid required. And, because such general duties as a duty not to harm encompass individuated ones (do not kill, do not enslave, do not expose to danger, etc.), I will sometimes refer to a duty and sometimes duties not to harm (or to aid).
5. In so far as they correlate with the same demands, we can say that the presence of some duties is over-determined. The wider consistency of the standard and institutional accounts, as Pogge observes, would require that neither account postulates an exclusive understanding of what rights are. Pogge, WPHR, 65, 170, 249, n. 272.
6. Pogge, WPHR, 170.
7. Thomas Pogge, "Real World Justice," Journal of Ethics 9 (2005): 29-53, 34.
8. Henceforth: RWJ.
9. See also Pablo Gilabert, "The Duty to Eradicate Global Poverty: Positive or Negative?," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (2004): 537-50, 545. Pogge refers to some institutional negative duties as " intermediate" duties but his point remains that they are not positive and are more stringent than the latter.
10. Pogge, RWJ, 34-36;
11. Sandrine Berges, "Interview with Professor Thomas Pogge," Éthique et économique/Ethics and Economics 5 (2007),
12. in Daniel Butt, Rectifying International Injustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 28, n. 47.
13. See Gilabert, "Duty to Eradicate Global Poverty," 543-49 for an argument aiming to show that Pogge ought to recognize positive duties as duties of justice.
14. See also Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence and Morality," Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-43;
15. Cécile Fabre, Social Rights under the Constitution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
16. Cf. Leif Wenar, "The Nature of Human Rights," in Real World Justice, ed. Andreas Føllesdal and Thomas Pogge (London: Springer, 2005), 285-93.
17. For arguments aiming to show that the set of institutions that violate rights should be drawn more broadly (and in this and other respects differently) see Carol G. Gould, "Coercion, Care, and Corporations: Omissions and Commissions in Thomas Pogge's Political Philosophy," Journal of Ethics 3 (2007): 381-93, 385-89.
18. Alan Patten, "Should We Stop Thinking about Poverty in Terms of Helping the Poor?," Ethics and International Affairs 19 (2005): 19-27;
19. Rowan Cruft, "Human Rights and Positive Duties," Ethics and International Affairs 19 (2005): 29-37;
20. Debra Satz, "What Do We Owe the Global Poor?," Ethics and International Affairs 19 (2005): 47-54, 51-54;
21. and Gould, "Coercion," 383-85.
22. Cf. Elizabeth Ashford, "The Inadequacy of Our Traditional Conception of the Duties Imposed by Human Rights," Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence XIX (2006): 217-35.
23. Henceforth: TCD. I am grateful to Thomas Pogge for pressing me to clarify this point.
24. Such a derivation is no easy matter, because in the course of doing so we shift the level of analysis, moving from a right held against institutions to duties falling on individuals. That is, the initial negative right requires that an institution does, or does not, perform some action A (e.g., does not kill). It follows, given the definitions adopted in this paper, that the corresponding duty falling on the institution to do A is a negative one. But parceling out that collective duty into corresponding individual duties is tricky. If we say that individuals are (negative) duty bound to do only what is necessary for the institution not to kill, we may be demanding too little: after all, it is not necessary for "third parties" to avoid trading with killers for killing to stop; the killers could simply themselves stop the killings. If, on the other hand, we say that individuals are (negative) duty bound to avoid any contribution to the institution, we may be demanding more than is warranted simply on account of wanting to constrain the institution: compliance with the duty might lead to much more than merely preventing the institution from killing. In essence, my worry is that the duty not to support unjust institutions may not be a duty that we can simply derive from the institutional negative duty not to harm. I am grateful to a JSP referee for pressing me to clarify this point. For arguments aiming to show why institutional negative duties would require individuals to perform positive duties if, unlike in this article, the positive/negative duty distinction were understood in act/refrain or assistance/noninterference senses, see Cruft, "Human Rights,"
25. and Gould, "Coercion, Care, and Corporations," 383.
26. Ashford, TCD, 217.
27. Ashford also attributes this understanding of the standard (deontological) conception of duties to Onora O'Neill in her Towards Justice and Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
28. Henceforth: TJAV.
29. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 80-81.
30. Joel Feinberg, "Collective Responsibility," Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 674-88, 684. Ashford herself explicitly and persuasively argues for an account of rights that accommodates the fact of complicity. She also, rightly, urges us to reject the view according to which rights not to be harmed can be violated only by agents who are solely or primarily responsible for the harm. I am only suggesting that these moves do not necessitate the adoption of a group (institutional) account.
31. For the difficulties and some solutions see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 78-82.
32. Sometimes he also chops up and burns the furniture to keep warm. Joel Feinberg, "Voluntary Euthanasia and the Inalienable Right to Life," Philosophy and Public Affairs 7 (1978): 93-123, 102.
33. "Work to reform" rather than "reform" for otherwise we would be asking individuals, or even groups, to do what will sometimes be impossible. Cf. Wilfried Hinsch and Markus Stepanians, "Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation-Weak and Strong," in Real World Justice, ed. Andreas Føllesdal and Thomas Pogge (London: Springer, 2005), 295-315, 311. Institutionalists can still stipulate that one should aim at reform only when success is not too unlikely; they can also allow a broad or narrow range of goals.
34. For a recent statement of why only demanding duties will likely eliminate severe injustice, see Tim Hayward, "International Political Theory and the Global Environment: Some Critical Questions for Liberal Cosmopolitans," Journal of Social Philosophy 40 (2009): 276-95.
35. O'Neill, TJAV, 148.
36. I defend the enforceability of positive rights here only in so far as I show them to be claimable. See John Tasioulas, "The Moral Reality of Human Rights," in Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right, ed. Thomas Pogge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) for arguments showing that even if unclaimable and in this and other respects unenforceable, rights can exist.
37. Feinberg, Harm to Others (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 158. He adds that "no one of them [the poor] would have an enforceable right against any particular benefactor."
38. Feinberg, "Collective Responsibility," 683-84.
39. Earnest J. Weinrib, "The Case for a Duty to Rescue," Yale Law Journal 90 (1980): 247-93, 291-92. I am grateful to a JSP referee for comments on this point.