If morally arbitrary features (that is, blind brute luck) should have no impact on the distribution of wealth, then the vast inequality and the disparity in life prospects between countries is a moral catastrophe; birthplace is completely based on luck, and yet has an enormous impact on life prospects. I contend that those in affluent countries, who have benefited from the luck of birthplace, ought to work towards a more egalitarian world, in which luck plays as little a role in life prospects as possible.

Global poverty is a pressing moral issue that necessitates serious moral reflection. It is inextricably connected with the issue of global justice. In today’s world where there are obvious extreme economic inequalities that impoverishes millions of people in many poor countries, the need for a sound principle of global justice is morally necessary. This thesis proposes Thomas Pogge’s idea of cosmopolitan justice as a feasible and relevant theory which can help and guide in alleviating severe worldwide poverty. Pogge emphasizes the stringent negative duty not to impose, sustain and profit from a global order that deprives the poor of their basic necessities necessary for them to lead a worthwhile human life. Many people are not aware that in participating in an unjust global order, they seriously harm the global poor more than their failure to provide assistance for the poor’s basic needs. So the greater responsibility of restructuring global order in order to meet the demands of global justice lies mainly in the hands of developed nations and their citizens who have profited from the present global arrangement and who have more than adequate means to help those who are deeply affected by extreme global economic inequalities. The stronger obligation not to harm the global poor must be performed by those who make decisions and policies at the global institutional level. They are the ones who decide the fate of the global poor and they are the ones who can easily change the rules underlying the present global order. The first step to poverty eradication and the overseeing that continuous efforts are exerted to realize this aim of helping the global poor are theirs to perform immediately. This task is not optional. It is urgent and a moral necessity.

In his landmark work World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge offers a novel approach to understanding the nature and extent of the obligations that citizens of wealthy states owe to their less fortunate counterparts in poor states. Pogge argues that the wealthy have weighty obligations to aid the global poor because the wealthy coercively impose institutions on the poor that leave their human rights, particularly their subsistence rights avoidably unfulfilled. Thus, Pogge claims that the wealthy states' obligations to the poor are ultimately generated by their negative duties, that is, their duties to refrain from harming. In this essay, I argue that Pogge cannot successfully appeal to negative duties in way that would appease his critics because his notion of a negative duty is seriously indeterminate, so much so as to compromise his ability to plausibly appeal to it.

<p>Global poverty is a pressing moral issue that necessitates serious moral reflection. It is inextricably connected with the issue of global justice. In today’s world where there are obvious extreme economic inequalities that impoverishes millions of people in many poor countries, the need for a sound principle of global justice is morally necessary. This thesis proposes Thomas Pogge’s idea of cosmopolitan justice as a feasible and relevant theory which can help and guide in alleviating severe worldwide poverty. Pogge emphasizes the stringent negative duty not to impose, sustain and profit from a global order that deprives the poor of their basic necessities necessary for them to lead a worthwhile human life. Many people are not aware that in participating in an unjust global order, they seriously harm the global poor more than their failure to provide assistance for the poor’s basic needs. So the greater responsibility of restructuring global order in order to meet the demands of global justice lies mainly in the hands of developed nations and their citizens who have profited from the present global arrangement and who have more than adequate means to help those who are deeply affected by extreme global economic inequalities. The stronger obligation not to harm the global poor must be performed by those who make decisions and policies at the global institutional level. They are the ones who decide the fate of the global poor and they are the ones who can easily change the rules underlying the present global order. The first step to poverty eradication and the overseeing that continuous efforts are exerted to realize this aim of helping the global poor are theirs to perform immediately. This task is not optional. It is urgent and a moral necessity.</p>

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2016-08-22T19:42:17Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Fabrício José Rodrigues de Lemos_.pdf: 1128559 bytes, checksum: b0f111c3f1defefc8a80daa19003f118 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-22T19:42:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fabrício José Rodrigues de Lemos_.pdf: 1128559 bytes, checksum: b0f111c3f1defefc8a80daa19003f118 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-30 / Nenhuma / O filósofo norte-americano John Rawls possui o grande mérito de revitalizar as discussões sobre justiça com a publicação de sua obra A theory of justice, de 1971. Nela, lançou base à teoria de justiça como equidade, sendo que, desde então, muito se comentou acerca das responsabilidades morais das entidades e indivíduos no plano doméstico. Em um artigo publicado em 1993 e, em 1999, transformado na obra Law of peoples and the public reason revisited, Rawls ampliou o escopo de suas preocupações e dissertou acerca das responsabilidades dos povos uns para os outros. Nas últimas duas décadas, a teoria de justiça global consolidou-se como um legítimo campo de indagações filosóficas, que visa possibilitar uma melhor compreensão das relações globais e do ambiente globalizado: as profundas modificações oriundas da mudança do paradigma westfaliano em razão da interconectividade e do aumento da complexidade das relações no plano global levaram críticos como Thomas Pogge a se questionar acerca da nova dinâmica mundial. A assunção de responsabilidades, tanto estatais e corporativas quanto as individuais, fazem parte da temática. Nesse sentido, com método de pesquisa eminentemente bibliográfico e documental, partindo da teoria rawlsiana, a dissertação visa demonstrar de que maneira essa mudança de paradigma ocorreu, tendo como referenciais teóricos tanto John Rawls quanto um dos maiores expoentes da teoria de justiça global, o filósofo alemão, atualmente radicado nos Estados Unidos, Thomas Pogge. Assim, a dissertação apresentará as mais recentes formulações teoréticas acerca do que pode ser chamado de justiça global e investigará as críticas e os avanços da obra de Pogge em relação ao pensamento de Rawls. / The American philosopher John Rawls has the great merit of revitalizing justice discussions with the publication of his 1971 work A theory of justice. In it, he gave base to theory of justice as fairness, and, since then, much was said about the moral responsibilities of organizations and individuals in domestic field. In an article published in 1993 and, in 1999, transformed in the work Law of peoples and the public reason revisited, Rawls expanded the scope of his concerns and lectured about the responsibilities of peoples to each other. In the last two decades, the global justice theory has established itself as a legitimate field of philosophical inquiry, which aims to enable a better understanding of global relations and the global environment: the profound changes arising from the change of the westphalian paradigm due to the interconnectivity and the increasing complexity of relationships globally, led critics like Thomas Pogge to wonder about the new world dynamics. The intake of responsibilities, both state and corporate, as well of the individual, are all part of the theme. In this sense, with the research method of eminently bibliographic research and documental, from the starting point of Rawlsian theory, the dissertation aims to demonstrate how this paradigm shift occurred, with the theoretical references of both John Rawls as of one of the greatest exponents of the global justice theory, the German philosopher, currently living in the United States, Thomas Pogge. Thus, the dissertation will present the latest theoretical formulations on what can be called global justice and will investigate the critiques and advances of Pogge's work in relation to Rawls‟s thinking.