Philip Kitcher has two central aims in The Rich and the Poor. The first is to argue that there is a need for ethical inquiry to be (re)introduced into political life and policymaking. And the second is to propose an approach to pursuing this goal, drawing on his broader account of ethical inquiry, and of the nature of ethics more broadly, that he has developed in other work. Kitcher argues that there is a need for significant change in the ways that we engage politically, and in the ways that policy choices are made and thought to be justified. This view is motivated by the thought that several trends observable over recent decades constitute powerful evidence of serious policy failures. Kitcher’s primary examples concern poverty and inequality, and specifically the failure to make adequate progress in eliminating global poverty, along with increasing inequality and deprivation in wealthier nations. Another important example that he discusses in some detail is the failure to adequately respond to the climate crisis (pp. 124–143, 165–168).

Kitcher diagnoses these failures as resulting largely from the rise of neoliberal approaches to policymaking and the key ethical assumptions that underlie them. In particular, he suggests that prior to the rise of neoliberalism it was widely assumed that the economic policies of rich nations should have as one of their aims reducing the poverty of others worldwide (p. 9), and that the primary reasons for this were altruistic rather than self-interested (p. 14). Neoliberalism replaced these ideas with “mutualism” (p. 14), according to which policymaking should aim to benefit all cooperating parties, taking the status quo as the relevant baseline. Given the bargaining advantages of the wealthy and powerful, it is unsurprising that this shift would lead to limited progress on poverty reduction, growing inequality, and an inadequate response to challenges such as climate change.

Kitcher suggests that there are at least two reasons that these policy failures are not generally recognized as failures to the extent that they should be. The first is that alongside the rise of neoliberalism, there has been increasing acceptance of a particular kind of “realism” about political and economic possibilities, according to which it is simply not possible, in the relevant sense, for the world to do better in terms of reducing poverty, limiting inequality, or mitigating climate change. This form of realism, Kitcher says, “consists in an opposition to distributional programs” (p. 108) aimed at reducing poverty and inequality, and involves a commitment to free market ideology (pp. 115–120). This ideology, in turn, produces policies that generate an “ultra-competitive” economy (p. 116), and leads many to think that the results of this competition, in which inequalities are large and many continue to live in poverty, are justified, or at least unavoidable.

The second reason that the policies of recent decades are often not recognized as failures is, according to Kitcher, the acceptance, among social scientists in particular, of a simplistic form of utilitarianism for the purposes of assessing the success or failure of policies (pp. 35–36, 43–51). Those who endorse this form of utilitarianism tend to treat aggregate income or wealth as an acceptable proxy for what ultimately matters morally (for example, preference satisfaction) (p. 46), and this leads many to conclude that the policies of recent decades have not been serious failures, despite the persistence of global poverty and increases in income and wealth inequality within richer nations. Kitcher claims that we ought to instead endorse the capability approach, developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, as offering the proper metric for assessing policies (pp. 55–60). The central feature of the capability approach that is relevant here is that it requires that we assess policies in terms of their contributions to core human functionings, which are understood, roughly, as conditions of persons that ensure that they have opportunities to pursue a wide range of goods, or to pursue well-being more generally. Following this framework, Kitcher argues, would help to avoid the misleading results that are generated when relying on aggregate income or wealth as the primary metrics of policy success.

Kitcher’s diagnoses of the failure to achieve more in terms of poverty reduction are plausible, if familiar, although there are additional contributing factors that, in my view, are important but are not discussed. For example, the influence of corporate interests on policymaking, both at the national level and within supra-national institutions, seems independently significant, even if not entirely unrelated to the rise of mutualism and free market ideology.

Kitcher contends that overcoming the barriers to policymaking—in order to adequately address poverty, inequality, and climate change—requires incorporating ethical inquiry, as he conceives of it, into the policy-making process. On his account of ethical inquiry, individuals ought to aim to determine what the results of an ideal deliberative process involving all members of an appropriately specified group would be (p. 89). An ideal deliberative process is, on his view, one in which the perspectives of all relevant parties are appropriately represented, in which only well-grounded factual information is relied upon, and in which the parties seek conclusions that everyone can tolerate by aiming to understand the perspectives of all of the other parties to the extent possible (p. 98).

We can bring ethical inquiry of roughly this kind into policymaking in the real world, Kitcher suggests, by bringing together representative samples of relevant groups to engage in actual deliberation, in the style of town meetings or the “mini-publics” studied by James Fishkin and others. The results of these deliberations should then have some role in policymaking, even if it is limited to informing the decision-making of elected officials. Kitcher argues that the results of the deliberations of this kind that have been observed give us reasons to be optimistic that they can be productive, and can avoid some of the concerns that many have expressed about their promise (for example, that they will be dominated by the more educated, or the more rhetorically skilled).

The idea that we should rely on public, representative deliberations of this kind in policymaking is interesting and worth taking seriously. And while it is not a new idea, Kitcher discusses and defends it in a helpful and thought-provoking way, and connects the idea to what are certainly among the most morally urgent issues that we face today.

There are, however, some reasons for skepticism about the promise of the proposal that are not addressed in detail in the book. For example, the existing experiments with the relevant forms of deliberation have occurred within nations, and primarily within smaller communities within nations. What would be needed to pursue this approach in the most representative way with respect to global poverty or climate change, however, would be to do it at the global level. It is not clear, though, that there are strong reasons to be as optimistic about the prospects of this succeeding. One reason for this is that there may be less overlap in the background ethical commitments that the parties would bring to the deliberations. Another, perhaps more serious concern, is that the interests of the parties would be more deeply at odds, and that as a result of this they may be less likely to be open to being persuaded that they ought to accept the kind of compromises that are necessary if the deliberations are to succeed.

In addition, as Kitcher himself notes, many of those who stand to be affected by the relevant policy choices cannot participate in deliberation (p. 151)—for example non-human animals or future generations. Participants must engage in the necessary ethical reflection without the benefit of having the perspectives of some of those who will be most affected represented. This, it seems to me, requires precisely the kind of ethical reflection by individuals that Kitcher argues is inadequate and must be reconceived in the way that he suggests.

Despite these concerns about the limits of the approach that Kitcher suggests, The Rich and the Poor is very much worth reading and contributes to essential discussions about how we ought to respond to global poverty and other pressing ethical issues of our day.