PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University
Nijmegen

This full text is a publisher's version.For additional information about this publication click this link.
[http://hdl.handle.net/2066/30174]
Please be advised that this information was generated on 2013-01-08 and may be subject to
change.
Affluent in the Face of Poverty

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of
the book.
Affluent in the Face of Poverty

On What Rich Individuals Like Us Should Do

Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Filosofie

Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor
aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann

1 Introduction 1
What Should Rich Individuals Like Us Do About Poverty?
1.1 The Central Question 1
1.2 A Case of Poverty 2
1.3 Clarification of the Central Question 5
1.3.1 Poor and Rich 5
1.3.2 What Rich Individuals Like Us Should Do 7
1.4 Doubts about the Central Question 9
1.4.1 Why Focus on this Question? 9
1.4.2 Can Our Contributions Be Meaningful? 10
1.5 The Approach of this Study 12

2 Towards a Position: Consequentialism and Beyond 17
On the Case for Consequentialism and on Acting when
Confronted with Two Worlds
2.1 The Case for Consequentialism 17
2.1.1 Around the Child in the Pond 17
2.1.2 Some Other Problematic Arguments 22
2.1.3 To Conclude: What Could the Case for
Consequentialism Be? 28
2.2 Should We Reject Consequentialism Because of Its Cost
to the Agent? 30
2.2.1 Williams’s Criticism of Consequentialism 30
2.2.2 Arguing from the Nature of Persons: Scheffler
and Beyond 35
2.2.3 To Conclude: Where Does All This Leave Us? 51

vi

3 Contractualist Criticisms 57

5.2 Criticisms of Recent Literature 134
5.2.1 Introduction: On Doing No Good for No Good Reason 134
5.2.2 Liam Murphy 134
5.2.3 Tim Mulgan 137
5.2.4 Garrett Cullity 142
To Conclude: Where We Stand 145

vii

6 Concretization 149
An Outline of the Good Life, and What We Can Do at Little Cost
6.1 A Broad Outline of a Theory of the Good 149
6.1.1 Some Rather Formal Remarks on the Good 149
6.1.2 A Theory of the Good in Broad Outline 154
6.1.3 The Outline and What We Should Do 165
6.1.4 The Outline, the Poor and the Rich 170
6.2 The Good Life, Giving Away Money, Restrictions
on Spending Money, and Some Further Suggestions 175
6.2.1 Giving Away Money 175
6.2.2 Restrictions on Spending Money 181
6.2.3 Some Further Suggestions 184
6.2.4 What Others Say and Where We Differ 187
To Conclude 190

7 Conclusion 193
Affluent in the Face of Poverty
7.1 Summary 193
7.1.1 The Question and the Approach 193
7.1.2 Summary of the Chapters 194
7.1.3 What Rich Individuals Like Us

vanola, Helder De Schutter en Ronald Tinnevelt. En dank jullie wel, Lis
Thomas en Peter Murray, voor jullie correcties van mijn Engels. Graag
noem ik ook Wout Ultee en Thomas Baumeister, van wie ik in de loop der
jaren veel heb geleerd, hoewel ik niet weet of er in de voorliggende studie
iets is waarin zij zich zouden terugkennen.
Een aantal vrienden hebben mij in de afgelopen jaren in veelvuldige ge-
sprekken en met hun manieren van leven gevoed: Janske Hermens, Archie
de Ceuninck van Capelle, Derk Jansen, Wibo van Lanen, Marije Mertens,
Danny de Paepe, Willem Koch, en Esther van Swieten. De meesten van
hen gaven ook waardevol commentaar bij delen in wording van deze
studie, en dat geldt ook voor de ‘paradoxale sociologen’, Frank van Tu-
bergen, Ruud van der Meulen, Jasper Muis, en Stijn Ruiter. Onze perio-
dieke bijeenkomsten waren altijd erg inspirerend!
Verder ben ik mijn buren Richelo de Windt en René Nuijs erkentelijk
voor vele discussies, en dank ik Arno Habets en Benedito dos Santos voor
hun hulp bij de totstandkoming van de ‘Braziliaanse’ paragraaf in het
eerste hoofdstuk. En ook al mijn overige vrienden: dank jullie wel!
Hoewel ik hier velen met naam zou willen vermelden, zal ik mij beperken
tot Vincent van Dongen, Shawn Haghighi, Eric van de Laar, Matthieu van
der Meer, Tjeerd Visser en Florens de Wit. Met de laatste ben ik uitgeko-

x
men bij de vriendschappen die mij al het grootste deel van mijn leven be-
geleiden, en hier wil ik zeker Joris Hemelaar, Michiel Jansen, en Anno
Braaksma noemen. Onze ‘milieugroep’ op het gymnasium is voor mij het
begin geweest van het streven om reflectie en maatschappelijke betrok-
kenheid hand in hand te laten gaan, hoe spannend en moeilijk die ver-
houding ook is en blijft.
Tenslotte dan degenen aan wie mijn dank zo vanzelfsprekend is dat ze
alle nadruk verdient. Allereerst mijn ouders Giel Philips en Mia Philips-

life holds for the Brazilian urban poor.
If you are reading this study, the chances are that you are not poor.
2

Neither is its author. Yet in our time we know very well the conditions
faced by many poor people. Therefore the question of what rich individu-
als should do about poverty readily arises. This is the central question ex-
plored by this study, along with some more specific questions, such as:
How much money should wealthy individuals spend on fighting poverty?
and, What restrictions should the wealthy place on the extent and orient-
tation of their expenditure in the light of poverty?
As will be discussed in more detail towards the end of this introduction,
our main method of further clarifying the central question will be to
consider it in relation to some of the most important forms of moral theo-
rizing. We will start by discussing the case for consequentialism, a theory
that states that one should always act to achieve the best results, the best-
known contemporary philosophical proponent of which is probably Peter
Singer. This theory tells wealthy people that in a number of circumstances
they should do a great deal to fight poverty, circumstances that quite pos-
sibly occur presently in wealthy societies. We will then consider whether
consequentialism should be abandoned in favour of an alternative theory.

1
Ferréz (2000).
2
As Tim Mulgan (2001) aptly remarks on the first page of his book, which deals with a
similar theme to the present study.
Affluent in the Face of Poverty
came to the towns in search of a better life, becoming squatters on un-
wanted pieces of land such as river banks and hillsides. While for many
eastern cities such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, this immi-
gration has ceased, many favelas remain on precarious land which is sub-
ject to periodic flooding or landslides during heavy rainfall. On the other

3
This brief impression of Brazilian urban poverty mainly draws on Caldeira (2000), Eakin
(1997), Kowarick (2000), Scheper-Hughes (1993), Souza (2000), Sposati (2001) and
Valenzuela Arce (1999). Most of these studies concern the Brazilian southeast, although
some look at the northeast, and some are more general. I do not always distinguish
between the two regions just mentioned. Two recent studies that provide some statistical
data about many of the aspects of poverty described in the text are Campos et al. (2004)
and Pochmann et al. (2005).
Affluent in the Face of Poverty
3
hand, many favelas have undergone, or are still undergoing a process of
‘urbanization’, that is, a process in which services and infrastructure such
as sewage, electricity, pavements, postal services and street names are put
in place. A number of poor people now own modest properties and many
are undertaking their own rebuilding, enlarging their houses in a process
that often continues for many years. For those who do not own homes,
however, the possibilities to purchase them are limited by a very restric-
tive mortgage system.
As far as hunger, malnutrition and the lack of safe drinking water are
concerned, the picture is mixed. In some areas, mainly in Brazil’s dry and
very poor northeast, the goal of ‘fome zero’ (zero hunger) adopted by the


4
favelas are a state within the state, subject to the often very strict safety
codes of drug lords and the like, and with residents living under the threat
of periodic shoot-outs between criminals, and gang members and the
police. Meanwhile, the poorly paid police officers are often more of a
problem than a solution. Unsurprisingly, the precarious day-to-day exis-
tence of many poor people frequently engenders a relatively short-term
logic and a rather materialistic view of the good life, where this consists
primarily in attaining all possible kinds of goods and pleasures. However,
behind this is also a campaign for respect: the street hierarchy offers its
own means for the underprivileged to ‘be someone’ – to gain a measure of
respect that is hard to come by if one abides by the codes of society at
large.
Nevertheless, many wish to undertake more mainstream occupations,
even if this means tolerating bad labour conditions. We might add that in
Brazil, the blacker one’s skin, the more precarious life is with respect to
work and income − the story of a Brazilian ‘racial democracy’, that is, of a
society without racial discrimination and prejudice, is a myth. For those
choosing this more common path, religion may offer particular solace (as
may the soap series) in the face of prejudice and other daily hardships,
such as violence or having to raise one’s children alone, as do many poor
women. Brazil used to be a self-evidently Catholic country – even if its
Catholicism allowed for the intermixing of other traditional practices,
many of them African. However, after base movements and liberation
theology had come and gone, religion often developed an evangelical
flavour, and many, though by no means all, of the new evangelical mo-
vements are Protestant. These movements are generally socially conserva-
tive and apolitical, further alienating the poor from politics.
Still, religion in its many forms is often one phenomenon which testi-

everywhere around them the reality of the poor that we see on TV −
however high the walls of their homes. 1.3 Clarification of the Central Question

1.3.1 Poor and Rich

What do we mean by ‘poor’ and ‘rich’? In this study, the term ‘poor’
refers to someone who lacks real freedom to do and be certain basic
things. In other words, someone is poor when they cannot actually do and
be certain things.
5
They have, for example, no real freedom to obtain clean
drinking water, adequate food, decent housing, sewage, decent health
care, and a safe environment. Also, they may lack the real freedom to
follow appropriate educational and professional paths and to enjoy the
respect of the wider society. This way of describing poverty is taken from
Amartya Sen’s ‘capability approach’, where ‘capability’ is his term for
real freedom.
6
Sen sees poverty as the ‘failure of basic capabilities to

4
Recent studies of the rich include Caldeira (2000) and (mainly on the very rich)
Pochmann et al. (2004).
5
For more on the notion of real freedom, see section 6.1.2 below.
6
See e.g. Sen (1992, 1993, 1999). Sen uses the technical term ‘functioning’ for doing and

cause it defines someone as poor by examining certain aspects of their
situation that do not involve comparing this situation with that of others.
12

Our approach is multidimensional rather than unidimensional because its
definition of someone as poor depends on many different aspects rather
than on just one thing such as income.
In our nomenclature, those who are not poor are classified as rich. The
term applies to those who have all (or almost all) the real freedoms just
mentioned.
13
Generally, however, we mean those who are at a comfortable
distance from being poor, even if they are not what are commonly called
the super rich. For our purposes here, in order to have a vivid picture of

7
Sen (1992), p. 109. Sen admits that poverty may well be associated with income
shortfalls and the like, but he suggests that what is important about income is how it leads
to the fulfilment of basic capabilities.
8
Ibid., p. 45n.
9
Obviously, we should also call someone poor if they lack most of these freedoms, but not
all.
10
See e.g. Sanchez-Jankowski (2001), Ravallion (2006).
11
For a defence of an objective rather than a subjective approach for a case where a lot
hinges on it – namely, for the case of a theory of the good life –, see section 6.1.1 below.
12


1.3.2 What Rich Individuals Like Us Should Do

When we ask what we as individuals should do about poverty we are
asking what we should do morally.
17
To understand better what we are
asking when we question what we should do about poverty I might imag-
ine a judge who, from an external position, determines whether our be-
haviour towards the poor has been good enough. In using this image, it
could easily be suggested that such a judge would have to be a kind of
god, and this is obviously a problematic interpretation.
18
However, the

14
This visualization is best applicable to urban contexts and it is somewhat of a
generalization. For example, not all the urban poor live in poor neighbourhoods.
15
A google search for this expression has amusing effects.
16
A very good discussion of the risks of extending the word ‘poverty’ to cover spiritual
and voluntary phenomena is found in the classic book of liberation theology by Gutiérrez
(1972), Ch. 13.
17
Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the expression what we ‘should do morally’ inter-
changeably with expressions such as what ‘moral requirements’, ‘moral obligations’, or
‘moral duties’ we have. For largely similar usage, see Singer (1972), note 2.
By ‘ethics’, I will usually mean the branch of philosophy that thinks about the moral.
Others, like Peter Singer in the quote below, may use the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘ethical’

myself to all rich individuals − leaving aside the fact that some hold parti-
cular positions which add to their level of engagement with the issue of

When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit
on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate
them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will
place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the King will say to
those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared
for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was
thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and
you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee,
or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee,
or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’
And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of
these my brethren, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart
from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I
was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a
stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in
prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see
thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to
thee?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the
least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but
the righteous into eternal life.
19
Yet it is not equally compatible with all moral theories, as we shall see. This is in-
evitable: everywhere, and in ethics more than in many other fields, one only understands
what one is asking by presupposing a partial answer.
20
Singer (1993a), p. 10. The visualization also allows that the question of what I should do

questions; one could also, for example, focus on how individuals could
work for institutional reform. Focusing on money has obvious risks, such
as suggesting that giving financial assistance is the most important thing
we should do. Moreover, this focus risks evoking simplistic ideas of how
poverty reduction could work, such as the idea that transferring wealth
could resolve the issue. Such risks cannot be stressed enough. Still, the
advantage of bringing the monetary issue somewhat to the forefront is that
it makes matters concrete and inescapable. For example, it is striking to
suggest that ‘a household making $100,000 could cut a yearly check for
$70,000’.
21 21
Singer (1999).
Affluent in the Face of Poverty
10
1.4.2 Can Our Contributions Be Meaningful?

Another doubt that could be expressed is whether as a rich individual I
can make meaningful contributions to fighting poverty. If not, our central
question is an academic one and therefore less interesting. I consider that
to be able to make a meaningful contribution to fighting poverty three
conditions must all be fulfilled.

Such practices are now rapidly emerging and reducing their shortcomings. One rela-
tively well-established Dutch practice is CBF labelling.
24
For a discussion that includes an extensive survey of the empirical literature see Cullity
(2004), Ch. 3. Cullity concludes:
The view that aid is harmful enough to undermine the case for thinking that the rich are
morally required to help the poor is unwarranted. This is so for two simple reasons: at
least some forms of aid are helpful, and help need not take the form of humanitarian
aid. (2004, p. 48)
Affluent in the Face of Poverty
11
neighbourhoods and provide them with jobs.
25
However, we should not
only think of what is commonly called humanitarian aid (such as provi-
ding health care information and schools). We can also think of many
forms of lobbying, for example, lobbying a government to punish police
officers who perpetrate extrajudicial killings and other crimes. It is true
that all the actions and projects referred to in such examples need cease-
less critical scrutiny
26
− even when they are not likely to be actions that
merely line the pockets of corrupt officials, breed dependency or denigrate
people. It is always possible that they have dark sides, such as when the
involvement of NGOs encourages governments to shirk their duties, or
when their work unintentionally creates new problems such as cultural
displacement. Nevertheless, it would usually be far-fetched to assert that

needed if we are to say that I should still do my part even if it only makes a considerable
difference when considered together with what others do.
28
Whether I can make a substantial difference according to this formula will depend on the
circumstances. To take a stylized and schematic example: if 100,000 equal actions free one
person who has been unjustly imprisoned, I will − by performing one action − have freed
Affluent in the Face of Poverty
12
this in depth, but this second way of calculating the difference I could
make seems at least as convincing as the first. Nevertheless, even if we
suppose that the second method of calculating was untenable, and that we
should say that I make no difference if the project went ahead without me,
or not, it is still possible to think of situations where my contribution
would be meaningful, namely, where things would not go ahead in the
same way if I did not contribute. This could be, most evidently, because
my action is meaningful beyond the contribution of others. Or it could, for
example, be because my action has such an influence on what others do,
that it makes a meaningful contribution to a project for this reason.
In short: it is probable that I can discover some responses to poverty
that are better than doing nothing, and that I can make a meaningful con-
tribution to these measures. This suggests that the central question of this
study is not likely to be merely academic. 1.5 The Approach of this Study

The answer to the question of what rich individuals like us should do

taken, different moral theories support very different answers.
29
This is
why a large part of our time will be spent considering moral theories.
30

Like many authors who have previously written about our question, we
have in the first place been occupied by the question of whether we should
always respond to poverty in the way that produces the best results − as
Peter Singer suggests in his 1972 article ‘Famine, Affluence, and
Morality’, the text that basically began the debates concerning this
question. If we should, it might well be the case that we should be doing
very much about poverty indeed. If there is something else we should be
doing, for example, if we ought to produce the best results only when we
can do so at little cost to ourselves, it may well be the case that we ought
to be doing much less about poverty. Therefore, in Chapter 2 we begin by
considering the case for consequentialism, and subsequently ask – in the
wake of criticisms by Bernard Williams and Samuel Scheffler − whether
consequentialism must be abandoned because it asks the agent to perform
actions that are in some sense too costly.
In the chapters that follow we take up the position that has been devel-
oped in the second chapter, and ask whether it must be modified or aban-
doned. Chapter 3 considers whether it must be modified or abandoned in

29
This is not to say that the answers to the questions just mentioned vary across all
different moral theories. But sometimes the answers that different moral theories give do
differ. Consequentialists, for instance, support answers that differ much from those that
many other moral theorists propose. This prompts the question of whether consequen-
tialism can be defended; a question that takes one into quite general discussions of moral

We try to make this position more tangible by providing a broad outline of
a theory of the good life. After doing so we will be in a position to provide
a more concrete answer to the question of what rich individuals like us
should do about poverty. By considering how donating money and obser-
ving certain restrictions when one is spending money impinge or fail to
impinge on the good life, we can come closer to answering the questions
of how much money rich individuals like us should spend on fighting
poverty, and which restrictions we should heed − in the light of poverty −
when spending money. The last chapter summarizes and concludes.
The present study will thus begin with the case for consequentialism,
and then ask whether consequentialism must, in the light of certain criti-
cisms, be modified or abandoned altogether in favour of a different posi-
tion.
32
Where criticisms spring from certain theoretical traditions or theo-
ries (notably in Chapters 3 and 5), we consider – in a rather defensive
move − whether the criticisms can be answered, if necessary by modifying

31
Of course, we cannot mention in this fourth chapter all of the thematic issues that might
spell problems for our provisional position. Many important issues will have to be omitted.
For example, there will be no discussion of in what sense, if any, a priority of compatriots
over foreigners can be justified. There will be a note on this issue, though, and this note
will also consider the appropriateness of taking the Brazilian case as an example.
32
Although I try to deal with criticisms in a fair manner, the possibility that if someone
was to do the same exercise starting with contractualism they would end with a different
result cannot be excluded.