Thomas Pogge

Thomas Pogge, is a philosopher who currently occupies the Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs chair at Yale University. He is also Professorial Fellow at the ANU Centre for Applied Philosophy and Research Director at the Centre for Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Pogge is a prolific writer and lecturer, who has written extensively on moral and political philosophy, including books on cosmopolitanism, global justice and extreme poverty. His book World Poverty and Human Rights is regarded as one of the most comprehensive works on global justice. Pogge also heads a team that is working towards developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide.

Pogge’s work on global justice and eradication of world poverty is marked by an emphasis on negative duties. This is in contrast to the emphasis on positive duties stressed by Charles Beitz, another well known philosopher. Pogge has argued that the global rich have failed to take decisive steps toward the eradication of global poverty by violating the ‘negative duty’ not to contribute to the imposition of a global institutional order that renders the basic socioeconomic rights of other human beings unfulfilled and not because they must honour a positive duty to help others in need when they can, at little cost to themselves.