Pogge Intro and 1

Before I began reading Pogge, I was wondering what kind of a transition I would need to make in my mind from talking about Dagger’s notion of republican liberalism to discussing world poverty and human rights. At some level, I knew that we would be discussing two very different conceptions of rights. After all, Dagger is obsessed with the idea of close-knit communities and Pogge is operating on a global scale. With that in mind, I began reading.
I found myself wondering if Pogge, in the introduction, is implicitly responding to a claim that Dagger would make. I seem to recall Dagger making the claim that we owe a special duty to our compatriots simply because they are members of our community. That, to me, seems to be the same claim that Pogge labels the “second skillful defense of our acquiescence in world poverty” starting on page 14. In other words, I’m wondering if Dagger would make the claim that “people may give priority to their compatriots, especially in the context of a system of competing states; it is permissible for us and our political representatives vigorously to pursue our interests within an adversarial system in which others and their representatives can vigorously pursue their interests” (14). It seems to me that this claim shares many ideas with Dagger (treating compatriots with priority, the idea of people organizing in small groups), but I (and I don’t have any text to back me up) don’t think that Dagger would go so far to approve acquiescence in world poverty, but I’m not sure why.
Also, I’m hoping we can spend some time in class on Thursday unpacking Pogge’s conception of harm including his six points that he claims make his conception of harm more restrictive (pg. 26) as well as his sixfold discussion of how institutions relate to human flourishing (pg. 47-48). I have a feeling that these points are important to understanding the larger point that he makes about harm (and his use of the term in general) as well as his institutional conception of human rights, so I think it may well be worth our time.