In the first part, the talk will reject the most influential arguments put forward to distinguish between perfect duties with correlative rights and imperfect duties without correlative rights. Either they imply a highly controversial understanding of morality or they are based on a concept of directed duties and, correspondingly, rights with severe shortcomings in other contexts. The second part presents a thorough reconstruction of the concepts of duty and rights as well as of the ‘directionality’ implied by them. This reconstruction will be based on the general debate on rights and their place in moral reasoning. In short, the talk will reconcile the quite specific question in what terms to formulate moral challenges like the one posed by global poverty with the more abstract discussion on moral rights and moral reasoning.
