Abstract
In this article I present four central challenges for Hennie Lötter’s book Poverty, Ethics and Justice. The first criticism takes issue with Lötter’s focus on social rather than global justice. Though he seems to be concerned with poverty everywhere, he takes social rather than global justice as the primary unit of analysis and this leads to a certain blindness to the ways in which discharging duties to the poor is a global not just society or state level project. My alternative perspective also gives us more insights into the nature of our duties to one another and can accommodate a wider range of duties. A second set of concerns revolves around what we must do to discharge our duties to the poor and what we need to know to help effectively. We come to appreciate that helping effectively is no easy matter and supplying more guidance would be helpful. Third, after discussing some relevant empirical research, I also discuss the kinds of initiatives that deserve support, that can act as rough guidelines for would-be assisters. These more simplified guidelines do not place such heavy epistemic demands on those aiming to help. Fourth, I explore whether we can offer some more guidelines for determining which of many plausible policy initiatives we should support, given that there are many good ideas and limited resources. I offer one guideline for choosing among what appear to be plausible policies to support.
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Notes
Other strong parts of the analysis include his argument that ‘justice is a cluster concept with a core meaning that unfolds into a kaleidoscope of dimensions like the facets of a finely cut diamond’ (Lötter 2011, p. 190). The facets of the diamond he identifies are: ‘justice as recognition, justice as reciprocity, justice as enablement, justice as distribution, justice as accountability and justice as transformation’ (Lötter 2011, p. 190).
In Chapter 11 Lötter also uses a good thought experiment effectively to highlight core functions of legitimate governments, including these five: ordered security, enablement, protection and mediation of liberties, protection of equality, and the state should also establish life-sustaining cooperation. This highlights the fundamental interests we have and that they should be protected by a set of basic rights embodied in a Bill of Rights. If a society is governed in accordance with these goals, poverty ‘will be prevented’ (Lötter 2011, p. 249).
These claims are elaborated on and emphasized also by Lötter (2011, p. 165).
There is a slightly more sophisticated awareness of these issues at Lötter (2011, pp. 278–279).
We can argue that these define the minimum that we can reasonably expect of one another, and we can go on to elaborate these ideas of reasonable expectation by harnessing the power of normative thought experiments, as I do in (Brock 2009, Chap. 3), for instance.
Though the interested reader might see Brock (2009).
For some examples, see Brock (2013).
Note the carefully measured phrasing of the last three claims, measured specifically to take account of one often mentioned case thought to present a counter-example, namely that of China. China has been successful at relieving extreme poverty in many ways, but in failing to develop and encourage citizens’ capacities for autonomy and in failing to permit the enjoyment of central freedoms and capabilities, China has failed to foster a deeper conception of flourishing for citizens, which an multi-faceted account of beneficial development might view as a serious ommission. For these more multi-facted accounts of human development see, for instance, Sen (1999) and Brock (2009).
Many have already done excellent work on this, prominently Thomas Pogge (2008).
See the EITI website at http://eiti.org.
This could also help build trans-national solidarity as we unite to keep our governments more accountable.
See the EITI website at http://eiti.org.
See the EITI website at http://eiti.org.
Furthermore, in future work it seems there is another difficult question he might like to address and that is: How should we distribute responsibilities for helping effectively?
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Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for excellent feedback received from several participants at the workshop on this book held at the University of Johannesburg, November 2013. I would like to acknowledge the particularly helpful comments of Hennie Lötter, Thad Metz, Darrel Moellendorf, and two anonymous reviewers for this journal.
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Brock, G. How Should We Discharge Our Responsibilities to Eradicate Poverty?. Res Publica 22, 301–315 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-016-9328-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-016-9328-z