Subsistence Needs and Individual Duties

Abstract

This chapter undertakes to provide some clarity regarding the nature of individual duties concerning global poverty by asking, firstly, who has what duties in fulfilling global subsistence needs, secondly what the status of such duties is (are they duties of justice or duties of virtue?), and thirdly, whether subsistence needs do indeed give rise to a human right to subsistence. It is in this manner that this chapter demonstrates how starting from duties can allow us to discriminate more precisely between genuine and (as yet) spurious rights, thus solving the first problem caused by the perspective of rights, namely the inflation of human rights. In this chapter, I also position myself within the larger global justice debate in order to illustrate how my position differs from dominant theories regarding our duties to the global poor. The main difference is that I consider those duties to be duties of virtue, and not duties of justice, which ultimately means that, at present, there can be no genuine human right to an adequate standard of living.