Gerhard Øverland

Poverty and the Moral Significance of Contribution

The main thesis of the article is that one’s responsibility to render assistance is not affected by having contributed to the situation by causing harm. I examine ways in which contribution to need is morally significant. Although contribution is relevant with regard to certain features, such as questions of blame, compensation, and fair distribution of the cost of assistance, I argue that contribution should carry no weight when assessing our duty to assist people in severe need if we can do so at little cost. If this is true we have reason to suspect that it is redundant to know whether or not we have in fact contributed to the need of the global poor when assessing our duty to address global poverty.

Responding to Global Poverty: Harm, Responsibility, and Agency

This book explores the nature of moral responsibilities of affluent individuals in the developed world, addressing global poverty and arguments that philosophers have offered for having these responsibilities. The first type of argument grounds responsibilities in the ability to avert serious suffering by taking on some cost. The second argument seeks to ground responsibilities in the fact that the affluent are contributing to such poverty. The authors criticise many of the claims advanced by those who seek to ground stringent responsibilities to the poor by invoking these two types of arguments. It does not follow from this that the affluent are meeting responsibilities to the poor. The book argues that while people are not ordinarily required to make large sacrifices in assisting others in severe need, they are required to incur moderate costs to do so. If the affluent fail consistently to meet standards, this fact can substantially increase the costs they are required to bear in order to address it.

Profiting from poverty

ABSTRACT We consider whether and under what conditions it is morally illicit to profit from poverty. We argue that when profit counterfactually depends on poverty, the agent making the profit is morally obliged to relinquish it. Finally, we argue that the people to whom the profit should be redirected are those on whom it counterfactually depends.

Self-defence among Innocent People

I explain the asymmetry between innocent aggressors and their (innocent) victims, and attempt to separate justified and unjustified defensive force when both parties are innocent. I propose the principle of initiating behaviour, which states that: ‘In order for one person to be justified in using defensive force the other party must initiate the apparently threatening behaviour, but the defendant’s interpretation of that behaviour, as being threatening, would have to be reasonable.’ We can thereby maintain the view that there is a significant relation between an act being justified and which party ought eventually to be given priority in a conflict situation. If we know that an act is justified, we know that we have to give preference to its agent when there is a choice between imposing equal harm on him or her and his or her victim.

On Disproportionate Force and Fighting in Vain

Two conditions guiding permissible use of force in self-defence are proportionality and success. According to the proportionality condition the means used to prevent an attack can be permissible only if they are proportional to the interest at stake. According to the success condition, otherwise impermissible acts can be justifi ed under the right to self-defence only if they are likely to succeed in preventing the perceived threat. These requirements should not always be interpreted narrowly. Sometimes people are permitted to kill culpable aggressors in order to avoid a non-lethal harm. Sometimes people are permitted to take up arms to defend themselves against culpable aggressors they have little or no hope of defeating. Recent attempts to explain why such actions against culpable aggressors may be permissible have appealed to the victim’s interest in defend-