Justification of the right to subsistence in contemporary Western philosophy: challenges and solutions

Abstract

The article discusses the views of modern Western philosophers on the isuue of socio-economic human rights, including the right to subsistence. The purpose of the work is to answer the question of whether the right to a decent life is morally justified. The work was carried out within the framework of the analytical approach and its inherent methodology. The author identifies several types of arguments expressed in Western literature against the right to a worthy existence. They are 1) actual impossibility of guaranteeing these rights; 2) denial of non-contractual positive obligations that could correspond to this right; 3) problematization of the imperfect nature of positive obligations corresponding to this law. It is shown that these objections in themselves are not sufficient to reject the right to a worthy existence, but they show that at the abstract level this right cannot be justified only in a “negative” sense, that is, as the right to which only the negative duties of others correspond. The author proposes to consider options for solving the problems that gave rise to discussions concerning the right to a dignified existence, outside of human rights discourse. Thus, the moral basis for the fight against poverty and other features of an “unworthy” existence can be formulated by applying to the public sphere (by analogy) the categories of civil law - condiction, tort and contract, as well as taking into account the classical conditions for the onset of legal liability. Moreover, the moral justification for securing some “decent” level of existence is achieved by referring to the general principles of fair distribution of material wealth (regardless of what is considered a “decent existence”). One of these principles is the Rawlsian principle of difference, which does not depend either on the idea of a person as a “moral agent” who requires some kind of minimum (“worthy”) level of well-being, or on understanding of the human rights nature.