La perspective d’une croissance économique illimitée sert depuis le commencement de la révolution industrielle le projet d’une amélioration généralisée des conditions de la vie humaine. On répond à la question sociale, issue des luttes pour un partage plus juste des avantages et des richesses, par l’idée qu’on peut et qu’on doit en mieux partager les fruits. Le terme de « développement durable » reconduit cette perspective : certes, on reconnaît le tour écologiquement destructeur de la passion productive, et on s’ingénie à lui inventer de nouveaux moyens, plus respectueux des données naturelles ou humaines, mais on maintient la nécessité de cette dynamique expansionniste. Les nouvelles « sciences du développement » en forment le corrélat théorique. Il y a là une évidence : la pauvreté et sa négativité doit être compensée par des productions nouvelles. Mais il y a là aussi une série de questions, dont la responsabilité revient à la philosophie : est-il assuré que la vie bonne ou heureuse soit toujours et seulement la vie « développée » et qu’entendre par « développement » ? Cette pauvreté que l’on entend résorber ou même abolir s’identifie-t-elle toujours et seulement à la misère, et à une négativité dont il faudrait se débarrasser ? Réexaminée dans ses usages contemporains, au croisement de l’éthique et de la politique, la notion de pauvreté constitue la frontière critique d’une écologie politique émergente. Ses ambiguïtés et ses ambivalences expliquent un embarras dont ce travail essaye de prendre la mesure : les anciens idéaux de simplicité ou de frugalité sont-ils compatibles avec les exigences de l’émancipation individuelle et de son institution démocratique ?

Originally published in 2004. Exclusion is a popular area of sociological research, with much analysis pointing towards survival practices and inclusion mechanisms as ways to cope with and confront exclusion. However, the question of what it means to act and how it is possible to do so from a vulnerable situation has yet to be properly addressed. This resourceful volume takes on this challenge, examining how to react and the measures to employ in instances of material and symbolic deprivation. It analyzes whether alliances can be formed and their potential benefit, and discusses which supports are available despite structural inequality and no opportunity for reciprocation. Drawing together illustrative case studies from across Europe, the contributors consider in depth how a community or individual can take support from a spoiled identity and transform both it and the physical situation. This illuminating volume also includes discussions of living without support, security of living conditions and dignity, claims for citizenship, collective action, continuity and survival. It proposes an innovative and groundbreaking theory for 'weak' action.

In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference.

Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.