Luck Egalitarianism, Kant and the Injustice of Tolerating Global Poverty
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/Isegoria.2018.058.04Keywords:
Kant, Global Poverty, Luck Egalitarianism, Freedom, Responsibility, Secondperson JustificationAbstract
This paper aims to offer a plausible and renewed defence of the axioms of the already well-known account of political philosophy ‘luck egalitarianism’. By finding certain support not only in the Kantian moral programme but also in widely accepted intuitions of our time, it is contended that luck egalitarianism possesses sufficient justification to become an ethical guide at the global level, revealing plausibly the existence of a compelling positive moral duty to terminate global poverty and denouncing its toleration as nothing but a matter of injustice. The arguments provided to embrace such a proposal are built upon the widely accepted claim in moral philosophy that ‘all persons are equal in fundamental moral worth’. From this standpoint, I argue that the luck egalitarian doctrine can not only satisfy such a claim to its ultimate consequences, but it also reasonably overcome its most severe challenges that have diminished its merits in recent times when it aspires to become a tenable theory of justice.
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