Poverty reduction: individual duty or institutional responsibility?

Abstract

In Positive Pflichten Corinna Mieth offers an answer to the question which duties citizens of rich countries have toward the poor considering the world poverty problem. Therefore she elaborates a differentiated philosophical conception of positive duties. These can, as she claims, have the same degree of obligation as negative duties, if they concern essential goods of a needy person. But this is only the case if five criteria at the agents side are fulfilled as well: responsibility, accountability, reasonability, permissibility, and chance of success. But this is for the most part not the case with duties concerning poverty reduction, which is why these can only be accounted for as weak duties – even though this result may not be satisfactory.