In What Sense Is the Right to Subsistence a Basic Right?

Henry Shue’s Basic Rights presents an extremely powerful and influential argument for the claim that the right to subsistence is a basic human right, full enjoyment of which is necessary for the full enjoyment of any other human right. Recently, however, Shue’s argument has been widely critiqued, including by philosophers sympathetic to his goal of defending the view that the right to subsistence is a human right of central moral importance but skeptical of his attempt to defend this by appeal to the claim that it is a basic right. The principal objection has been that while the right to subsistence is strongly supportive of other rights, Shue’s claim that it is strictly necessary to the full enjoyment of other rights is too strong. Clearly, the credibility of Shue’s claim that the right to subsistence is a basic right depends in large part on how it is interpreted. I aim here to clarify the best way of understanding this claim, and to show that on the most plausible interpretation of it, Shue’s argument for it can in fact withstand many of the criticisms leveled against it. I then aim to show that while Shue’s argument as it stands is nevertheless vulnerable to an important objection, a development of it, which is very much in the spirit of his original argument, avoids this objection. I focus in particular on Thomas Pogge’s recent sustained critique of Shue’s argument, which crystallizes several core objections to it in a way that is especially systematic and incisive. Pogge offers a series of possible ways of interpreting Shue’s argument, and claims that it fails on each interpretation. I begin in section 1 by offering an analysis of Shue’s argument that the right to subsistence is a basic right, and showing why I take only one of Pogge’s interpretations of it to be plausible. Pogge’s other interpretations of Shue’s argument, and the objections he raises to it on these interpretations, nevertheless highlight a number of key points that are central to assessing Shue’s argument. I discuss these points in sections 2 and 3, and show why a correct interpretation of Shue’s argument avoids the worries raised by these other interpretations. In section 4 I turn to Pogge’s final (and, as I argue, correct) interpretation of Shue’s argument, and argue that the objection Pogge raises to Shue’s argument on this interpretation is a compelling one, which identifies an important weakness in Shue’s argument as it stands. In section 5, however, I argue that a natural development of Shue’s argument does establish his ground-breaking claim that the right to subsistence is a basic human right.