Authors: Cindy Holder, in Gottfried Schweiger, Clemens Sedmak, eds.

Year: 2023

Routledge Handbook of Philosophy and Poverty, pp. 301-314

The connection between poverty and pursuing a good life is often explained instrumentally. Poverty is said to be wrong because it deprives people of the material basis for one or more elements of a good life. However, while deprivation and forced choice are central to the experience of poverty, in many instances focusing on deprivation risks distorting what has gone wrong and ignoring key elements of what is required to address it. In this chapter it is argued that poverty should be approached as the manifesting of a refusal to accept that specific people and groups are morally entitled to go about their lives in accordance with their own understanding of what makes life good. This refusal wrongs people experiencing poverty, individually and as communities, and the wronged may rightfully insist on a remedy. The standing of people experiencing poverty to command a remedy, and to insist upon performance of the duties that remedy requires, must be recognized and reflected in both analysis and practice.

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