Global justice and natural rights
The Ferrater Mora Chair of Contemporary Thought, together with the ASSOFIA Student Association, organised a series of conferences on “Global Justice and Natural Rights”. This is a highly topical subject, which mobilizes all historians, philosophers, moralists, jurists and economists. When we talk about “global justice” we are referring to the need, increasingly heard, to translate into concrete, practical parameters the theory of justice formulated last century by John Rawls, the greatest exponent of contemporary political philosophy. This calls for good theoretical knowledge - historical and philosophical - but also social and legal insight to find innovative solutions to the age-old problems of injustice and inequality in the world. In this sense, the debate on global justice is not a mere theoretical debate but the effort - extraordinarily brilliant and suggestive - to land theory on the ground of the most concrete practice, most in need of new answers.
The presence of Prof. Thomas Pogge (1953), Professor of Philosophy and International Relations at Yale University, is worth mentioning.
The cycle followed the following programme:
- 2 March, Context and situation prior to global justice, by Rosa Canal and Parals (UdG):
- 9 March, Principles of Global Justice and Proposals for Institutional Reform, by Hugo Omar Seleme (CONICET, Argentina) and Paula Casal (UPF)
- 16 March, Le droit naturel, la Révolution Française et le problème des Colonies, by Florence Gauthier (University of Paris)
- 17 March, Républicanisme historique et neorépublicanismes académiques contemporains, by Florence Gauthier (University of Paris) and Antoni Domènech (UB)
- 30 April, Human Rights as Constraints on Global Institutional Design, by Thomas Pogge (Yale University)
Prof. Pogge also took advantage of his presence to organise a conference at the La Mercè Cultural Centre of Girona City Council on 30 April, entitled How to provide medicines to the world’s poor and at the same time encourage the pharmaceutical industry: the Health Impact Fund.