Avoiding the greatest plague of all : Plato and Aristotle -- Societal responsibility and the undeserving poor : John Locke -- The noble poor : Jean Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith -- Empirical influences and the complexities of poverty : Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill -- Poverty as a...

Collected here are fifteen essays about the severe poverty that today afflicts billions of human lives. The essays seek to explain why freedom from poverty is a human right and what duties this right creates for the affluent. This volume derives from a UNESCO philosophy program organized in...