With regard to the problem of world poverty, libertarian theories of corrective justice emphasize negative duties and the idea of responsibility whereas utilitarian theories of help concentrate on positive duties based on the capacity of the helper. Thomas Pogge has developed a revised model of compensation that entails positive obligations that are generated by negative duties. He intends to show that the affluent are violating their negative duties to ensure that their conduct will not harm others: They are contributing to and profiting from an unjust global order. But the claim that negative duty generated positive obligations are more acceptable than positive duties is contestable. I examine whether Henry Shue's model that is integrating negative duties and positive duties is more convincing concerning the foundation of positive duties to protect others. I defend the idea that there are positive duties of justice. This approach can integrate an allocation of positive duties via responsibility and maintain the advantage of an independent foundation of positive duties.In this paper, I want to critically examine the idea that some forms of world poverty can be understood as outcomes of structural injustice that violates subsistence rights that should be guaranteed by institutions. In the first part of my paper I will present the crucial points of this discussion by introducing two alternative approaches: (a) classical liberalism with the idea of corrective justice, and (b) utilitarianism with the idea of individual positive duties. In the second part, I will introduce Thomas Pogge's recent attempt to show that positive obligations arise for the affluent inhabitants of industrialized countries to compensate for the violation of a negative duty not to harm the poor by imposing an unjust global economic order on them. But as a detailed debate has shown, Pogge's claim that our duties with regard to the poverty problem are primarily negative is not convincing. I want to defend the idea that positive duties of protection and assistance are important duties Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2008) 11:15-36
This article offers a Kantian account of dignity violations in the context of contemporary migration to western states. It considers three major issues: “modern slavery,” statutory detention, and lack of rights to engage in economic activity. While most Kantian accounts emphasize the dignity violations of treating people as “mere means,” we point out that this does not capture the central issue: the “hostile environment” that so many migrants face. The first part of the article briefly sets out a Kantian account of dignity violations. The second part highlights two key differences between modern slavery and its historical forebears. It emphasizes the interpersonal rather than institutional character of modern slavery, and distinguishes trafficking from smuggling. The third part argues that migrants who lack formal rights to remain and work face institutional exclusions that violate human dignity. Policies that aim to discourage and restrict immigration demean people’s status as ends in themselves. Moreover, they do so by actively denying opportunities to act as means for others. As such, the article draws a link between Kant’s well-known cosmopolitan right not to be treated with hostility and his less well-known ethical duty, “to be a useful member of the world.” Dignity can be found in acting as a means for others; hostility and exclusion can violate dignity just as much as instrumentalization.
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