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Private Philanthropy and Positive Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Alan Gewirth
Alan Gewirth
Affiliation:
Philosophy, University of Chicago
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Extract

How can anyone be opposed to private philanthropy? Such philanthropy consists in persons freely giving of their wealth or other goods to benefit individuals and groups they consider worthy of support. As private persons, they act apart from – although not, of course, in contravention of – the political apparatus of the state. In acting in this beneficent way, the philanthropists are indeed, as their name etymologically implies, lovers of humanity; and their efforts are also justified as exercises of their right to freedom, including the free use of the resources they own, which they have presumably acquired by their own free efforts or by the efforts of other persons who have freely transferred these resources to them. Thus, private philanthropy combines two of the highest values of individual and social morality: personal freedom and interpersonal beneficence.

I. Moral Problems of Private Philanthropy

Many questions about moral, and especially human, rights arise from private philanthropy as thus briefly characterized. These questions may be divided into three sets, which focus respectively on the agents of philanthropy (i.e., the philanthropists themselves), on the recipients of philanthropy, and on the objects for which philanthropic awards are given. First, regarding the agents: Do they have a right to all the wealth they possess? Have they accumulated this wealth in a way that has respected the moral rights of other persons? If the answer is negative, even in part, then in what morally valid sense is all the wealth in question theirs to give away, even if they use it for philanthropic purposes: Do they have a right to give it away as they choose?

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Spring 1987 , pp. 55 - 78
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1987

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References

1 See Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 27, 187Google Scholar; and Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 33.Google Scholar

2 See Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. xiGoogle Scholar; and Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. ix.

3 See Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); “The Epistemology of Human Rights,” Social Philosophy & Policy, vol. 1, no. 2 (Spring 1984), pp. 1–24.

4 See Gewirth, Reason and Morality, pp. 82–102; Human Rights, pp. 67–78; “Why Agents Must Claim Rights: A Reply,” Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79 (1982), pp. 403–410; “Replies to My Critics,” E., Regis, Jr., ed., Gewirth's Ethical Rationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 202–215Google Scholar; “Why Rights Are Indispensable,” Mind, vol. 95 (1986), pp. 329–344.

5 See Shue, Henry, Basic Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 37ff., 51.Google Scholar

6 Sidgwick, Henry, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 389n.Google Scholar

7 See Gewirth, Reason and Morality, pp. 25, 46–47, 78, 81, 96–97, 169–170; and Human Rights, pp. 24–26.

8 See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 75ff.

9 See Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 30–33, 170, 179n., 238.

10 SeeFishkin, James S., The Limits of Obligation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Singer, Peter, “Famine, Affluence and Morality,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 1, no. 3 (Spring 1972), pp. 229–243Google Scholar. The term “overload” is from Fishkin, ch. 18, pp. 145ff. See also McGuire, Martin C., “The Calculus of Moral Obligation,” Ethics, vol. 95 (January 1985), pp. 199–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 King, Seth S., “In Africa, A Natural Disaster Made Worse by Man,” New York Times, June 17, 1984, Sec. E, p. 8Google Scholar. For similar analyses, see Poleman, Thomas T., “World Food: A Perspective,” Science, vol. 188 (May 19, 1975), pp. 515ffCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Crosson, Pierre R., “Institutional Obstacles to World Food Production,” Science, vol. 188 (May 19, 1975), pp. 522, 523CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Walters, Harry T., “Difficult Issues Underlying Food Problems,” Science, vol. 188 (May 19, 1975), p. 530CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also Sen, Amartya, Poverty and Famines (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982)Google Scholar, and Shue, Basic Rights, pp. 41ff.

12 Alan Gewirth, “Starvation and Human Rights,” Human Rights, pp. 197–217. On the broader issues, see also Gewirth, “Economic Justice: Concepts and Criteria,” K., Kipnis and Meyers, D. T., eds., Economic Justice: Private Rights and Public Responsibilities (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1985), pp. 7–32Google Scholar; and “Economic Rights,” Philosophical Topics, vol. 14 (Fall 1986), pp. 169–193.