The Morality of Extreme Wealth

Poverty and inequality are central themes in political philosophy. And whereas much research concerns problems with having too little or less than others, surprisingly little work has been done so far on the morality in the high end of the distributive scale. Current theories of distributive justice fail to capture the distinctive problems with extreme wealth. This project aims to fill this gap, first, by exploring how moral reasons to worry about inequality and poverty are transformed when wealth becomes extreme and, second, by building new theory on the morality of extreme wealth. The project aims at three significant academic contributions: (1) to explore and map out distinctive moral reasons to be concerned with extreme wealth from the perspective of distributive justice, (2) to analyse the role of individual responsibility in a theory of extreme wealth morality, and (3) to evaluate the moral obligations of the extremely wealthy in a society with existing injustices.