On Thomas Pogge’s Global Justice Theory

Global justice is a complicated topic, which not only involves many questions, but also refers to sharp relevant debates. In order to understand Pogge’s global justice theory better, we should first analyze relevant center concepts——justice, right, and duty, and also make clear the meanings of these concepts in modern society and their relation. Then we need to elaborate the development course of social justice, international justice and global justice, which is also the development course of moral philosophy and political philosophy. With this kind of course, we can better explain the historic meaning of John Rawls’s theory to promote the formation of global justice theory, and understand the important contribution of Pogge’s theory to global justice.The modern political philosophy, which takes "right" as the core word, makes us pay more attentions to the concept of "human rights" when deliberating global justice, and Pogge even uses human rights as the criterion of justice-ness of the global institutional order. The moral consideration, which set basic human rights as its stamping ground, makes it necessary to justify universal human rights philosophically, but Pogge doesn’t provide sufficient justification of such kind. One mode of philosophical justification is Griffinic, which make the distinction between human being and animal as the content of personhood, then it becomes every person’s right and claim to cultivate and realize these contents of personhood. Those conditions, which needed for cultivating and realizing the contents of personhood, and which represented with the words of Right, become the claims and contents of human rights. Another mode of philosophical justification is Rawlsanic, Rawls’ ideas of original position, overlapping consensus and public reason can be revised appropriately, so that representatives under original position can use public reason to make overlapping consensus about basic human rights. The merit of Griffinic justification is the clarity of the human rights idea, while the shortcomings are that the contents of the basic human rights can’t reflect the changes of social environment, and that the definition of personhood’s content is vulnerable to the critique of dogmatism; the advantage of Rawlsanic justification is that under overlapping consensus, the content of human rights can reflect social change, yet the weakness is that the rights consensus been made may get beyond the range of human rights. The logic reasoning points to the combination of these two modes, we can first use Rawlsanic way to make consensus about the concept of personhood, then use Griffinic way of concept analysis to deduce basic human rights from personhood.Between the internal conflicts of basic human rights, the problem of the priority between the right of life and the right of property seems especially important. Such problem of priority can not only lead to an ancient debate, but also be the theoretical basis of Pogge’s Healthy Impact Funds. Based on Lock’s property right theory, Robert Nozick emphasizes the inviolability of individual’s legal property, only when out of voluntary, no body or organization can deprive anyone’s property with any reason. But under severe condition, this theory of absolute property right is not absolutely inviolable:when A’s life confronts with other’s severe threat, yet a little part of B’s property can relieve such threat effectively, A’s right to life has a claim to B’s property right; in another word, when the cost is not too serious, B has moral duty of positive assistance to A’s right to life. If the threat to A’s life is caused by B’s behavior, and B’s property can relieve such threat effectively, then B’s moral duty of relief is even more grave. In both condition, B’s property right is not inviolable, and A’s right to life in particular condition has priority over other’s property right.To contrast with the concept of right is the concept if duty. Concerning the elimination of global poverty, there are both positive and negative dimensions. From positive dimension, those global poor people living in absolute poverty have positive right to claim others’assistance, correspondingly global rich people have positive duty to assist poor people in getting out of absolute poverty; from negative dimension, global poor people have negative right to immunize other’s harms, and othesr—including individuals and institutions—have negative duty not to harm global poor people. Between positive and negative duties, the latter one has more significant moral meaning. What is more, the injustice of global institutional orders highlights the function of institution, and when referring to the cause of global poverty, institutional factors have more influence than non-institutional factors. The combination of negative duty and institutional factor brings about the idea of Institutional Negative Duty, which can help deepening the moral consideration for the global institutional orders. From the moral point of view, the unjust global institutional orders make global poor people live in absolute poverty, their basic human rights can’t be secured, yet the realization of basic human rights’objects should be the intrinsic demand to the (internal and external) institutions.After making clear the relevant concepts of global justice, we have a direction to understand the concrete questions about global justice. Global Poverty is one of the most important questions that global justice concerns, though some countries have made great progress in eliminating poverty, absolute poverty is still serious in the global range. From moral aspect, serious global poverty causes unacceptable result: there are hundreds of millions of people live in absolute poverty, whose basic human rights can’t receive due protections. But when explaining the cause of global poverty, theorists disagree with each other, which can be divided into internal-cause faction and external-cause faction. The internal-cause faction—which represented by John Rawls—believes that poor countries’ poverty is due mainly to the causes of themselves, including poor countries’ geographical environment, population policy, government administration, political system, cultural idea and so on. These internal subjective elements cause continuous poverty in poor countries. The external-cause faction—which represented by Thomas Pogge—holds that even though internal cause is one of the elements that lead to poor countries’ poverty, the mainly factor is still external cause, that is, the injustice of the current global institutional orders. In Pogge’s opinion, the injustice of the global institutional orders has many aspects, including International Bribe, Government Recognition Rules, International Borrowing Privilege, International Resource Privilege, The New Global Economic Orders, and International Pharmaceutical Patent Right and so on. On the whole, these unjust global rules advantage rich countries and disadvantage poor ones, and are the main causes that lead to poor countries’ continuous poverty. To against the injustice of the global institutional orders, Pogge brings up some reform proposals in response, which cover Global Resources Dividend, the Reforms of International Borrowing Privilege and International Resource Privilege, Health Impact Fund, The Vertical Dispersal of Sovereignty and so on. These original reform proposals are significant achievements of the global justice study, yet as a supplement, the reform of the United Nations is the necessary condition for these proposals’ implementation.