James Grant, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, discusses the debate over whether distributive justice requires that well-off people do something about poverty in other countries. 'Cosmopolitan' philosophers, such as Charles Beitz and Simon Caney, argue that it does. Anti-cosmopolitans, such as John Rawls and Thomas Nagel, deny this.

Global Poverty: Philosophical Questions

3. Arguments from Distributive Justice

These lectures are about the moral obligations that well-off people have toward poor people living in other countries. Poverty kills about one-third of humankind. Many philosophers argue that the average person in a rich country has a moral obligation to do something about this. These lectures introduce those arguments, as well as the objections that others have raised against them. They show how contemporary moral philosophy deals with what many regard as the most important moral problem facing the world today.

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Global Poverty: Philosophical Questions