A Kantian argument against world poverty
| Date | 01 October 2019 |
| Published date | 01 October 2019 |
| Author | Merten Reglitz |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885116662566 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2019, Vol. 18(4) 489–507
!The Author(s) 2016
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1474885116662566
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
EJPT
Article
A Kantian argument against
world poverty
Merten Reglitz
Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany
Abstract
Immanuel Kant is recognised as one of the first philosophers who wrote systematically
about global justice and world peace. In the current debate on global justice, he is
mostly appealed to by critics of extensive duties of global justice. However, I show in
this paper that an analysis of Kant’s late work on rights and justice provides ample
resources for disagreeing with those who take Kant to call for only modest changes in
global politics. Kant’s comments in the Doctrine of Right clarify that he thinks we need a
coercively enforced global civil condition. But his work also contains ideas that imply
that within such a global legal order there must be no extreme forms of poverty and
inequality, and that the current holdings of states are by no means conclusive posses-
sions without confirmation by the global legal order we have a duty to establish. Thus,
this paper challenges the prevailing interpretation of Kant as a conser vative thinker
about global justice that is held, for instance, by the leading contemporary liberal
thinkers such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and Ronald Dworkin.
Keywords
Kant’s Doctrine of Right, global distributive justice, cosmopolitanism, world poverty,
global property scheme
A major debate in contemporary political philosophy concerns the question: what
duties arise in the face of the existing poverty in our world? A major fault-line in
this debate exists between philosophers who hold that this kind of poverty gives rise
to enforceable duties of justice
1
and others who argue that absolute deprivation
only justifies non-enforceable moral duties of humanitarian aid. Advocates of the
latter position include some of the main proponents of liberal egalitarianism such
as Ronald Dworkin (2013) and Thomas Nagel (2005). In their view, duties of
distributive justice to beneficially eliminate poverty are not independent of the
institutional context in which this deprivation occurs: both Nagel and Dworkin
Corresponding author:
Merten Reglitz, Goethe-Universita
¨t Frankfurt am Main, Exzellenzcluster ’Normative Ordnungen‘,
Max-Horkheimer-Straße 2, Frankfurt am Main, Hessen 60323, Germany.
Email: merten.reglitz@normativeorders.net
are explicit that if a certain institutional scheme (similar to that of nation states that
exercise power in the name of and over their subjects) were to exist globally, every-
one that lived within this common scheme would have distributional obligations
towards all others subject to the same scheme. However, currently there is no
coercive international institutional context of the sort that would generate (either
egalitarian or weaker) distributive duties of justice. Further, Dworkin (2013: 29),
John Rawls (2001: 36), and Nagel (2005: 121) all deny with reference to Immanuel
Kant that there is a duty to establish such an institutional scheme.
2
In agreement with this last point, Katrin Flikschuh (2010) has argued that from
a Kantian perspective the idea of a coercive supranational institution is a concep-
tual contradiction and thus impossible. If these arguments are correct, global duties
of justice to fight poverty are either not administrable or (if we follow leading
liberal egalitarians) non-existent. What we have to hope for, then, is that those
in a position to help fulfil their general but unenforceable duties of charity to come
to the aid of those starving to death or dying for lack of clean water or health care.
As a look at our world shows, the poor should not get their hopes up too high that
such charity will be forthcoming to a degree that could really enable them to escape
their situation. In this paper, I will show that from the Kantian perspective accept-
ing the view that poverty merely gives rise to humanitarian duties is mistaken.
Contrary to Flikschuh’s view I argue that – if we accept Kant’s theory of justice
– we have a duty (a) to create coercive political institutions that span the entire
globe; and (b) to eradicate any poverty within this scheme because poverty that
undermines people’s independence renders any legal scheme illegitimate.
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in Kant’s political theory
and its implications. Kant’s particular conception of rights as relational claims that
contain the authorisation to use coercion has been thoroughly explored in a
number of illuminating studies.
3
However, given Kant’s pessimistic remarks
about global institutions in Perpetual Peace, and the fact that his theory of
Right does not dictate any particular scheme of rights, the resources contained
in his late work on justice and rights (his Doctrine of Right) for addressing the issue
of global poverty have not been utilised. It is the aim of this paper to redress this
deficiency.
4
Living in a world of almost exclusively absolutistic governments,
Kant’s primary concern certainly was not with the idea of a global legal order
but rather with criticising the despotic governments of the states that existed at
that time, and with theorising what a just order would have to look like at the
domestic level. But given that his work does include concepts and remarks that
point towards the idea of a global scheme of rights as the full realisation of a
rightful condition for all of humanity, working out the contours of this idea is a
legitimate project in its own right, which (as will become clear) also has the virtue
of lending greater coherence to his theory of justice as a whole.
My argument proceeds in the following way: in Section 1, I will briefly outline
the main aspects of Kant’s theory of Right that are essential for the argument
advanced in this paper. Section 2 shows how Kant’s argument for the duty to
enter into a civil condition ultimately leads to the demand to create some kind
of coercive global institution that involves the will of everyone. In Section 3,
490 European Journal of Political Theory 18(4)
To continue reading
Request your trial