Thomas Pogge
Yale University, Philosophy, Faculty Member
- Having received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard, Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International... moreHaving received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard, Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and founding Director of the Yale Global Justice Program. Pogge is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science as well as co-founder of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP), an international network aiming to enhance the impact of scholars, teachers and students on global poverty, and of Incentives for Global Health, a team effort toward developing a complement to the patent regime that would improve access to advanced pharmaceuticals for the poor worldwide. His publications include Designing in Ethics, co-edited, Cambridge 2017; Global Tax Fairness, co-edited, Oxford 2016; Politics as Usual, Polity 2010; World Poverty and Human Rights, 2nd edition, Polity 2008; Global Justice and Global Ethics, co-edited, Paragon House 2008; John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice, Oxford 2007; and Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right, edited, Oxford & UNESCO 2007. More information at https://campuspress.yale.edu/thomaspogge/edit
- John Rawlsedit
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Research Interests: Philosophy, Political Science, Politics, Democracy, Inequality, and 3 moreLegislature, Delegate, and Theoria
Introduction Alison M. Jaggar 1.Philosophy, Social Science, Global Poverty Joshua Cohen 2.Rights, Harm, and Institutions Kok-Chor Tan 3.'How much is enough Mr Thomas? How much will ever be enough?' Neera Chandhoke 4.What Negative... more
Introduction Alison M. Jaggar 1.Philosophy, Social Science, Global Poverty Joshua Cohen 2.Rights, Harm, and Institutions Kok-Chor Tan 3.'How much is enough Mr Thomas? How much will ever be enough?' Neera Chandhoke 4.What Negative Duties? Which Moral Universalism? Jiwei Ci 5.Non-Egalitarian Global Fairness Erin I. Kelly and Lionel K. McPherson 6.Realistic Reform of International Trade in Resources Leif Wenar 7.Realizing (Through Racializing) Pogge Charles W. Mills 8.Responses to the Critics Thomas Pogge
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"The largest Ebola outbreak to date—first detected in December 2013 and still ongoing as of April 2015—has cast new light on the shortfalls of international public health systems.1 As in previous health crises, scrutiny has reemerged... more
"The largest Ebola outbreak to date—first detected in December 2013 and still ongoing as of April 2015—has cast new light on the shortfalls of international public health systems.1 As in previous health crises, scrutiny has reemerged over the pharmaceutical industry’s ability and willingness to innovate new medicines for underserved disease areas. The public debate has intensified following revelations that promising drug candidates to treat Ebola had gone undeveloped despite compelling preclinical results.2 This lack of development is especially troubling because it occurred after a recently implemented U.S. incentive scheme—the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) tropical disease priority review voucher program—designed to counteract exactly this problem. Taking Ebola as a case in point, it is useful to examine the short history and ongoing refinement of this voucher program, since it represents one of the most significant legislative efforts to systematically address the relative absence of com- mercial rewards for drugs targeting tropical diseases. This analysis evaluates the voucher program’s effectiveness for both stimulating private sector innovation and achieving positive health impacts among populations most severely burdened by tropical diseases. It then proposes specific recommendations for how law- makers can improve the program’s legislation to better achieve these objectives. "
Research Interests: Medicine, Legislation, Neglected tropical diseases, Incentive, Scrutiny, and 4 moreTropical Disease, Voucher, L, and V
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This essay relates the struggle to eradicate world hunger to the battle over abortion. It criticizes the Dworkin's defense of the legality of abortion, by presenting arguments those in both sides of the abortion debate (pro-election... more
This essay relates the struggle to eradicate world hunger to the battle over abortion. It criticizes the Dworkin's defense of the legality of abortion, by presenting arguments those in both sides of the abortion debate (pro-election and pro-life) to spend their time and resources in the fight against world hunger instead of the abortion battle, in which both sides could work together. In the fight over whether and to what extent abortions should be legal, great expenditures of effort are merely neutralizing each other. Fighting world hunger is much less wasteful, and less costly for civil harmony and for the standing of morality in our culture. Various counter-arguments invoking considerations of cost-effectiveness, or the distinctions between doing and letting happen or between compatriots and foreigners can be refuted.
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"Global Justice" brings together a collection of groundbreaking philosophical essays - written by some of the world's most distinguished moral and political theorists - that address the most important moral issues of our... more
"Global Justice" brings together a collection of groundbreaking philosophical essays - written by some of the world's most distinguished moral and political theorists - that address the most important moral issues of our time.Topics covered in this compelling volume include: human rights; national and multicultural identities; poverty, and the effectiveness of charity; racial and gender equality; justice and international relations; democracy and the future world order; and much more.This will become an invaluable reference for anyone with an interest in any aspect of global justice.
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This chapter deals with Rawls's desire to develop a theory of social justice that is practical, and thus he emphasizes that moral considerations need to be sensitive to a certain degree to empirical experience. The main issue is how a... more
This chapter deals with Rawls's desire to develop a theory of social justice that is practical, and thus he emphasizes that moral considerations need to be sensitive to a certain degree to empirical experience. The main issue is how a society may sustain itself justly and through a long duration of time. What it means for a society to be well-ordered and why it is important to have a political conception of justice are discussed as components of Rawls's practicability concerns. How Rawls understands his conception of justice as a liberal one and why he opposes more comprehensive liberalisms over his preferred political liberalism are discussed.
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The original position, which is Rawls's account of a hypothetical contract, is examined in how it plays an important role in a Rawlsian conception on justice. Through the original position, justice as fairness is achieved, which deems... more
The original position, which is Rawls's account of a hypothetical contract, is examined in how it plays an important role in a Rawlsian conception on justice. Through the original position, justice as fairness is achieved, which deems a social order as just insofar as it could be the object of fair agreement. The chapter explicates maximin aggregation — reflecting a concern for the worst-off — and Rawls's reasons for favoring it over a focus on average well-being. The chapter also introduces and discusses the justifiability of Rawls's account of primary goods, in particular, the lexical priority he assigns to the basic liberties over the remaining social primary good.
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This chapter introduces Rawls's three-tiered approach to justice. How Rawls comes to adopt a purely recipient-oriented criterion of justice is discussed. Another important element of a criterion of justice that is discussed is the... more
This chapter introduces Rawls's three-tiered approach to justice. How Rawls comes to adopt a purely recipient-oriented criterion of justice is discussed. Another important element of a criterion of justice that is discussed is the anonymity condition. Why Rawls chose to focus on fundamental interests rather than, say, happiness as the appropriate metric of well-being, is examined.
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For some thirteen years now, the World Bank (‘the Bank’) has regularly reported the number of people living below an international poverty line, colloquially known as ‘$1/day’.3 Reports for the most recent year, 1998, put this number at... more
For some thirteen years now, the World Bank (‘the Bank’) has regularly reported the number of people living below an international poverty line, colloquially known as ‘$1/day’.3 Reports for the most recent year, 1998, put this number at 1,175.14 million.4 The Bank’s estimates of severe income poverty — its global extent, geographical distribution, and trend over time — are widely cited in official publications by governments and international organizations and in popular media, often in support of the view that liberalization and globalization have helped to reduce poverty worldwide. For instance, the President of the World Bank recently declared: “Over the past few years, these better policies have contributed to more rapid growth in developing countries ’ per capita incomes than at any point since the mid-1970s. And faster growth has meant poverty reduction: the proportion of people worldwide living in absolute poverty has dropped steadily in recent decades, from 29 % in 1990 to a...
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This chapter argues that the World Bank's approach to estimating the extent, distribution, and trend of global income poverty is neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary international poverty line that is not... more
This chapter argues that the World Bank's approach to estimating the extent, distribution, and trend of global income poverty is neither meaningful nor reliable. The Bank uses an arbitrary international poverty line that is not adequately anchored in any specification of the real requirements of human beings. Moreover, it employs a concept of purchasing power ‘equivalence’ that is neither well defined nor appropriate for poverty assessment. These difficulties are inherent in the Bank's ‘money-metric’ approach and cannot be credibly overcome without dispensing with this approach altogether. In addition, the Bank extrapolates incorrectly from limited data and thereby creates an appearance of precision that masks the high probable error of its estimates. It is difficult to judge the nature and extent of the errors in global poverty estimates that these three flaws produce. However, there is reason to believe that the Bank's approach may have led it to understate the extent of global income poverty and to infer without adequate justification that global income poverty has steeply declined in the recent period. A new methodology of global poverty assessment, focused directly on what is needed to achieve elementary human requirements, is feasible and necessary. A practical approach to implementing an alternative is described.
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In The Morality of Freedom, Joseph Raz plausibly proposes the following statement as the general form of strictly egalitarian principles: ‘All Fs who do not have G have a right to G if some Fs have G’. He then proceeds to mount a... more
In The Morality of Freedom, Joseph Raz plausibly proposes the following statement as the general form of strictly egalitarian principles: ‘All Fs who do not have G have a right to G if some Fs have G’. He then proceeds to mount a sustained criticism of such principles as being deeply implausible. Can one not care about equality as such without being irrational, envious or gripped by a strange aesthetic ideal? This chapter argues that, under one of two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive assumptions about the aggregate magnitude of G, caring about equality as such need not be encumbered with such undesirable baggage. The aggregate magnitude of anything is supposed to be either constant or variable. This chapter examines Raz's philosophy on equality, incommensurability, rights, egalitarian rule, pure negative liberty, and utilitarianism and the pursuit of happiness.
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The chief problems with the present system governing the development and distribution of medicines are well known: despite relatively low manufacturing costs patented medicines are often very expensive and are therefore unaffordable for... more
The chief problems with the present system governing the development and distribution of medicines are well known: despite relatively low manufacturing costs patented medicines are often very expensive and are therefore unaffordable for most people; and diseases concentrated among the poor attract little or no pharmaceutical research. As a result of both factors the disease burden among the poor is avoidably very high. Many diseases of the poor are communicable and expose all of humanity to the risk of new and virulent strains. These problems are further aggravated: by patients who often deterred by high prices fail to complete a full course of treatment; by lack of access to competent medical staff who would ensure that medicines are taken correctly; and by counterfeiters often attracted by high prices who may dilute a medicines active ingredients. In addition competitive marketing and litigation costs reduce the return from innovation and make it a less attractive investment. Each of these problems has provoked ideas and initiatives by academics NGOs governments and international agencies. By supporting both innovation and real access the Health Impact Fund extends the best of these ideas into one comprehensive unified solution that makes substantial progress toward a rational system of developing and distributing worldwide the pharmaceuticals we all need. (Excerpt)
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The Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea (AE- BKH)was set up in Barcelona in 2013 as the office for the Southern European region and the Mediterranean. The Academia Europaea is a pan-European, nongovernmental, not-for-profit... more
The Barcelona Knowledge Hub of the Academia Europaea (AE- BKH)was set up in Barcelona in 2013 as the office for the Southern European region and the Mediterranean. The Academia Europaea is a pan-European, nongovernmental, not-for-profit association of over 4000 individual scien- tists and scholars who are recognized as experts and leaders in their own fields. It is committed to identifying topics of trans-European importance to science and scholarship, and provides, where appropriate, its expertise and its independent and impartial advice to European institutions, governments and international agencies concerning matters affecting science, scholarship and academic life in Europe. The AE-BKH organizes multidisciplinary activities that consider the perspective of the social sciences and the humanities, with scholarly aims as well as the goal of promoting the dissemination of science. One of the very special activities of the AE-BKH is the celebration of the pres- ent-day Disputatio of...
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This chapter documents a participatory approach to developing a new, gender-sensitive measure of deprivation that improves upon existing measures of poverty and gender equity. Over 3 years, across 18 sites in Angola, Fiji, Indonesia,... more
This chapter documents a participatory approach to developing a new, gender-sensitive measure of deprivation that improves upon existing measures of poverty and gender equity. Over 3 years, across 18 sites in Angola, Fiji, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Philippines, men and women in poor communities engaged in a range of qualitative discussions and quantitative evaluation exercises to help develop the Individual Deprivation Measure. The IDM tracks deprivation in 15 dimensions, uses interval scales within dimensions and can easily be administered in most impoverished areas. It represents a significant advance in multidimensional measurement by focusing on individuals rather than households, by covering all important dimensions of poverty, by being gender-sensitive in the selection and coding of dimensions and by being appropriately sensitive to the depth of deprivation. The IDM demonstrates the possibility of establishing objective tools of social valuation through a process ...
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Nowhere is the injustice of the global distribution of income and wealth more palpable than in health. While the world's affluent spend fortunes on the most trifling treatments, poor people's lives are ruined and often cut short... more
Nowhere is the injustice of the global distribution of income and wealth more palpable than in health. While the world's affluent spend fortunes on the most trifling treatments, poor people's lives are ruined and often cut short prematurely by challenges that could easily be overcome at low cost: childbirth, diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria, HIV/AIDS, measles, pneumonia. Millions are avoidably dying from such causes each year and billions of lives avoidably blighted by these diseases of poverty. Drawing on in-depth empirical research spanning Asia, Latin America, and Africa, this path-breaking collection offers fresh perspectives from critically engaged scholars. Protecting the Health of the Poor presents a call and a vision for unified efforts across geographies, levels and sectors to make the right to health truly universal.
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This chapter documents a participatory approach to developing a new, gender-sensitive measure of deprivation that improves upon existing measures of poverty and gender equity. Over three years, across 18 sites in Angola, Fiji, Indonesia,... more
This chapter documents a participatory approach to developing a new, gender-sensitive measure of deprivation that improves upon existing measures of poverty and gender equity. Over three years, across 18 sites in Angola, Fiji, Indonesia, Malawi, Mozambique, and the Philippines, men and women in poor communities engaged in a range of qualitative discussions and quantitative evaluation exercises to help develop the Individual Deprivation Measure. The IDM tracks deprivation in 15 dimensions, uses interval scales within dimensions, and can easily be administered in most impoverished areas. It represents a significant advance in multidimensional measurement by focusing on individuals rather than households, by covering all important dimensions of poverty, by being gender-sensitive in the selection and coding of dimensions, and by being appropriately sensitive to the depth of deprivation. The IDM demonstrates the possibility of establishing objective tools of social valuation through a pr...
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Governments and their international agencies (FAO, World Bank) conceive of the eradication of hunger and poverty as a worthy wish that will eventually be realized through economic growth. They also make great cosmetic efforts to present... more
Governments and their international agencies (FAO, World Bank) conceive of the eradication of hunger and poverty as a worthy wish that will eventually be realized through economic growth. They also make great cosmetic efforts to present as good-looking trend pictures as they can. Citizens ought to insist that the eradication of severe deprivations is a human-rights correlative duty that permits no avoidable delay. Academics ought to collaborate toward providing a systematic alternative monitoring of what progress has really been made against undernourishment and other poverty-related deprivations.
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Research Interests: Achilles tendon and Heel
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1 van Eijk MJ, Roes KCB, Honing MLH, et al. Eff ect of rivastigmine as an adjunct to usual care with haloperidol on duration of delirium and mortality in critically ill patients: a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised... more
1 van Eijk MJ, Roes KCB, Honing MLH, et al. Eff ect of rivastigmine as an adjunct to usual care with haloperidol on duration of delirium and mortality in critically ill patients: a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomised trial. Lancet 2010; 376: 1829–37. 2 al-Kassab AS, Vijayakumar E. Profi le of serum cholinesterase in systemic sepsis syndrome (septic shock) in intensive care unit patients. Eur J Clin Chem Clin Biochem 1995; 33: 11–14. 3 Gamsjager T, Brenner L, Sitzwohl C, Weinstabl C. Half-lives of albumin and cholinesterase in critical ill patients. Clin Chem Lab Med 2008; 46: 1140–42. 4 Sener S, Ozsarac M. Case of the month: rivastigmine (Exelon) toxicity with evidence of respiratory depression. Emerg Med J 2006; 23: 82–85.
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Thomas W. Pogge - World Poverty and Human Rights
Dr. Krisha Kops spoke with Thomas Pogge about the issue
of measurements in global justice initiatives, Rawls, and questions around expert
knowledge.
of measurements in global justice initiatives, Rawls, and questions around expert
knowledge.