PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen This full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. [http://hdl.handle.net/2066/30174] Please be advised that this information was generated on 2013-01-08 and may be subject to change. Affluent in the Face of Poverty Cover photograph: Jos Philips (São Paulo, 2001) With thanks to Ruben Biezeman Cover design: René Staelenberg, Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 8555 012 9 NUR 730 Keywords: poverty, wealth, rich individuals; ethics, moral philosophy, consequentialism; duties, responsibility, good life. © Jos Philips / Pallas Publications – Amsterdam University Press, 2007 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Affluent in the Face of Poverty On What Rich Individuals Like Us Should Do Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Filosofie Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 31 mei 2007 om 12.00 uur precies door Joseph Pieter Mathijs Philips geboren op 14 juni 1974 te Geleen Promotores: Prof. dr. P.J.M. van Tongeren Prof. dr. A. Vandevelde (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) Manuscriptcommissie: Prof. dr. M.L.J. Karskens Prof. dr. M. Düwell (Universiteit Utrecht) Prof. dr. R. Ruben v Contents Dankwoord ix 1 Introduction 1 What Should Rich Individuals Like Us Do About Poverty? 1.1 The Central Question 1 1.2 A Case of Poverty 2 1.3 Clarification of the Central Question 5 1.3.1 Poor and Rich 5 1.3.2 What Rich Individuals Like Us Should Do 7 1.4 Doubts about the Central Question 9 1.4.1 Why Focus on this Question? 9 1.4.2 Can Our Contributions Be Meaningful? 10 1.5 The Approach of this Study 12 2 Towards a Position: Consequentialism and Beyond 17 On the Case for Consequentialism and on Acting when Confronted with Two Worlds 2.1 The Case for Consequentialism 17 2.1.1 Around the Child in the Pond 17 2.1.2 Some Other Problematic Arguments 22 2.1.3 To Conclude: What Could the Case for Consequentialism Be? 28 2.2 Should We Reject Consequentialism Because of Its Cost to the Agent? 30 2.2.1 Williams’s Criticism of Consequentialism 30 2.2.2 Arguing from the Nature of Persons: Scheffler and Beyond 35 2.2.3 To Conclude: Where Does All This Leave Us? 51 vi 3 Contractualist Criticisms 57 Doubts about Teleology, False Suggestions of Harmony, and Fair Shares 3.1 Criticisms by Contractualism 57 3.1.1 Introduction: Contractualism and Its Critical Motivation 57 3.1.2 Some Standard Criticisms of Teleology 60 3.2 Criticisms of Contractualism 70 3.2.1 Scanlon and the Seduction of Harmony 70 3.2.2 On Folk Contractualism 79 To Conclude 85 4 Diverse Criticisms 87 The Treatment of Others, Responsibility-Sensitivity, and Special Relationships 4.1 Synchronic and Diachronic Criticisms 87 4.1.1 What You May Do Unto Others and What They May Do Unto You 87 4.1.2 Taking Past Deeds into Account 101 4.2 Criticisms concerning Special Relationships 107 4.2.1 On Friends 107 4.2.2 The Treatment of Those Nearby 111 4.2.3 A Note on Nationality 115 To Conclude 118 5 Recent Criticisms 121 On the Work of Liam Murphy, Tim Mulgan, and Garrett Cullity 5.1 Criticisms Emerging from Recent Literature 121 5.1.1 Liam Murphy 121 5.1.2 Tim Mulgan 126 5.1.3 Garrett Cullity 129 5.2 Criticisms of Recent Literature 134 5.2.1 Introduction: On Doing No Good for No Good Reason 134 5.2.2 Liam Murphy 134 5.2.3 Tim Mulgan 137 5.2.4 Garrett Cullity 142 To Conclude: Where We Stand 145 vii 6 Concretization 149 An Outline of the Good Life, and What We Can Do at Little Cost 6.1 A Broad Outline of a Theory of the Good 149 6.1.1 Some Rather Formal Remarks on the Good 149 6.1.2 A Theory of the Good in Broad Outline 154 6.1.3 The Outline and What We Should Do 165 6.1.4 The Outline, the Poor and the Rich 170 6.2 The Good Life, Giving Away Money, Restrictions on Spending Money, and Some Further Suggestions 175 6.2.1 Giving Away Money 175 6.2.2 Restrictions on Spending Money 181 6.2.3 Some Further Suggestions 184 6.2.4 What Others Say and Where We Differ 187 To Conclude 190 7 Conclusion 193 Affluent in the Face of Poverty 7.1 Summary 193 7.1.1 The Question and the Approach 193 7.1.2 Summary of the Chapters 194 7.1.3 What Rich Individuals Like Us Should Do About Poverty 203 7.2 Envoi 208 7.2.1 The Present Study and Beyond 208 7.2.2 The Shortest Answer 209 Bibliography 211 Samenvatting in het Nederlands 217 About the author 227 ix Dankwoord Dit boek is in de loop van een aantal intense jaren tot stand gekomen. Van 2002 tot 2006 kreeg het in Nijmegen, en voor een deel in Leuven, zijn vorm; maar de eerste basis ervoor werd al gelegd in Berkeley in 2000 en 2001. Ik ben talloze mensen die in deze jaren een stukje, of een hele weg, met mij zijn meegelopen, erg dankbaar. Ik ben bang dat ik ze hier niet allemaal naar voren kan halen, maar een aantal van hen wil ik zeker niet ongenoemd laten. Allereerst wil ik mijn promotoren bedanken. Paul van Tongeren dank ik voor zijn scherpe, analytische commentaar en voor zijn accurate en be- trouwbare hulp; en Toon Vandevelde dank ik voor zijn verfrissende, rake opmerkingen en voor zijn aanmoediging. Van de vele collega’s met wie het een plezier was om samen te werken, wil ik speciaal Chris Bremmers en Marcel Becker noemen. Naast deze dagelijkse contacten waren er vele, wat mij betreft zeer vruchtbare gesprekken en discussies op conferenties en in het doctoraatsseminarie van Toon Vandevelde in Leuven. Uit velen vermeld ik, in dit verband, in het bijzonder Peter Dietsch, Benedetta Gio- vanola, Helder De Schutter en Ronald Tinnevelt. En dank jullie wel, Lis Thomas en Peter Murray, voor jullie correcties van mijn Engels. Graag noem ik ook Wout Ultee en Thomas Baumeister, van wie ik in de loop der jaren veel heb geleerd, hoewel ik niet weet of er in de voorliggende studie iets is waarin zij zich zouden terugkennen. Een aantal vrienden hebben mij in de afgelopen jaren in veelvuldige ge- sprekken en met hun manieren van leven gevoed: Janske Hermens, Archie de Ceuninck van Capelle, Derk Jansen, Wibo van Lanen, Marije Mertens, Danny de Paepe, Willem Koch, en Esther van Swieten. De meesten van hen gaven ook waardevol commentaar bij delen in wording van deze studie, en dat geldt ook voor de ‘paradoxale sociologen’, Frank van Tu- bergen, Ruud van der Meulen, Jasper Muis, en Stijn Ruiter. Onze perio- dieke bijeenkomsten waren altijd erg inspirerend! Verder ben ik mijn buren Richelo de Windt en René Nuijs erkentelijk voor vele discussies, en dank ik Arno Habets en Benedito dos Santos voor hun hulp bij de totstandkoming van de ‘Braziliaanse’ paragraaf in het eerste hoofdstuk. En ook al mijn overige vrienden: dank jullie wel! Hoewel ik hier velen met naam zou willen vermelden, zal ik mij beperken tot Vincent van Dongen, Shawn Haghighi, Eric van de Laar, Matthieu van der Meer, Tjeerd Visser en Florens de Wit. Met de laatste ben ik uitgeko- [...]... After doing so we will be in a position to provide a more concrete answer to the question of what rich individuals like us should do about poverty By considering how donating money and observing certain restrictions when one is spending money impinge or fail to impinge on the good life, we can come closer to answering the questions of how much money rich individuals like us should spend on fighting poverty, ... each of us, a question concerning what I personally should do A further doubt is whether one should, at a more specific level, give special attention (as we will do) to the question of how much money rich individuals like us should spend on fighting poverty, and what restrictions on our lifestyle should be applied when we are spending money The answer is that there is no necessity to specifically focus... wealthy individuals spend on fighting poverty? and, What restrictions should the wealthy place on the extent and orienttation of their expenditure in the light of poverty? As will be discussed in more detail towards the end of this introduction, our main method of further clarifying the central question will be to consider it in relation to some of the most important forms of moral theorizing We will... best fought by good institutions such as good governments and markets and a vibrant civil society One should therefore focus on how to bring about institutional reform rather than on what rich individuals should do It is beyond doubt that good institutions are in many ways the most important for the eradication of poverty Even so the question of what rich people like us should do has a special importance... attempting to make our final position more concrete To obtain a better feel for the kind of situations that prompt the central question, we will continue the introduction by providing an impression of the living conditions in what are commonly considered to be the poor neighbourhoods of Brazilian cities This impression will be followed by a clarification of the concepts of ‘poor’ and rich We will then... of Poverty poverty Furthermore, I mean to distinguish individuals from governments and other institutions (such as transnational corporations) This focus on individuals may invite criticism, to which we now turn 1.4 Doubts about the Central Question 1.4.1 Why Focus on this Question? Is the question of what rich individuals should do to fight poverty not the wrong question to concentrate on? Poverty, ... that the central question of this study is not likely to be merely academic 1.5 The Approach of this Study The answer to the question of what rich individuals like us should do against poverty depends on many things To begin with, as we saw above, this answer depends on whether we can do anything meaningful If so, what we should do depends at least on which courses of action are meaningful, and what. .. rather than their self-perception It is absolute rather than relative because it defines someone as poor by examining certain aspects of their situation that do not involve comparing this situation with that of others.12 Our approach is multidimensional rather than unidimensional because its definition of someone as poor depends on many different aspects rather than on just one thing such as income In. .. If (1) and (2) are the case, obviously what I should do is promote the good (in other words, these goods) as best I can.19 By contrast, in relation to what I should do, if there is not in the end only one kind of relevant things in the world, which can moreover be described as goods, then the resulting picture of what I should do – as someone from the outside would judge it based on what is present before... nothing Secondly, I must be able to find out what these actions are, and thirdly, my contribution to those courses of action must itself make a meaningful difference We shall take the first two conditions together We do have some ways of discerning combinations of actions that seem considerably better than doing nothing against poverty, such as becoming personally acquainted with situations where there . JMP Affluent in the Face of Poverty 1 1 Introduction What Should Rich Individuals Like Us Do About Poverty? 1.1 The Central Question. situations that prompt the central question, we will continue the introduction by providing an impression of the living conditions in what are commonly considered