Pogge

The first part of chapter two was pretty straight forward. He is looking at how human rights should be conceived. He traces human rights back to their origins, or at least back to an earlier notion of where they evolved from – natural law. But once natural law is examined he says, “It need not involve demands on one’s conduct toward other subjects at all and, even if it does, need not involve the idea that by violating such demands one has wronged these subjects.”(61) And this is different from that of natural rights because he says, “involves significant narrowing of content possibilities by introducing the idea that the relevant moral demands are based on moral concern for certain subjects; right holders.”(61) So essentially by narrowing the category, the language used today for human rights, evolved from this transition, and he goes on to break it down into four sections of the significance of human rights. I found it interesting how the notion of human rights hold an official stance and cannot be violated by just anyone, but governments and leaders specifically and not by petty criminals.

When he talks about official disrespect, is he talking about specifically the violation of human rights? Or does the violation of human rights fall under a larger category than just officials? Also, which side is he promoting in section 2.4, from my account he isn’t promoting the libertarians side because they only require negative duties, but is he promoting the maximalist side (that of positive and negative duties)? It seems to me that he is, but perhaps the maximalist side is to dramatic and is also rejecting that too.

I found chapter three to be very interesting. Specifically the part when he talks about types of incentives and how if our current morality provides ideal incentives that are regrettable by its own light, then do we have good reason to revise our current notion of morality. Our current morality is as such, or so it seems, that if we hire a middle man, we will be able to wipe our hands clean, even though we know full well what they will do before we hire them. If this is the correct take on it, then it seems that this is what so many people do to get out of having responsibility and essentially he concludes that they are not guilt-free by hiring a middleman. I know there was a lot of more going on in this chapter, but this is what I picked up on. If we could go over chapter three briefly that would help.

In 4.1 on page 98, he lays out the criteria for a universalistic concept (in this case social justice). But why is he doing this? Chapter four was difficult to follow. One area I was thoroughly lost in and didn’t know what was going on was when he starts talking about in 4.5 David Millers contextualism and 4.6 John Rawls. I understood he disagreed with Rawls on a number of fronts, but why is this distinction important for his theory?

In section 4.8 he says, “many citizens of the affluent countries are convinced of this…these people believe that, for such progress to occur, the poor countries themselves must get their house in order, must give themselves governments and political institutions that are more responsive to the needs of their population.”(117) and he goes on to say “our hands are tied.” I take it he doesn’t mean that our hands are tied but if he does, what does he mean?

How does he suggest we deal with these national causal factors that are being promoted from within? At the end of the chapter he says that his argument shows that even these national causal factors, not withstanding, we still have share responbility. But how has he shown this?