The idea of empowerment has gained a significant role in the discourse of poverty. I outline a restricted conception of empowerment inspired by Kant’s idea of rightful honour. According to this conception, empowerment consists in enabling individuals to assert their own human rights (juridical empowerment). I apply this conception to impoverished persons and argue that it is crucial to their self-respect, their so-called ‘power-[from-]within,’ and their political agency, and has a teleological primacy regarding our efforts to reduce poverty. I also defend the idea that there is a moral right to this form of empowerment and a corresponding duty to empower the impoverished as rights-asserters. Juridical empowerment will be compatible with a pluralism of substantive accounts of the moral wrongs of poverty and with broader conceptions of empowerment.

赋权的理念在贫困的讨论中发挥了重要作用。我概述了一种受康德正当荣誉思想启发的受限制的赋权概念。根据这一概念，赋权在于使个人能够维护自己的人权（司法赋权）。我将这一概念应用于贫困者，并认为这对他们的自尊、他们所谓的“权力-[来自-]内部”和他们的政治机构至关重要，并且对于我们减少贫困的努力具有目的论的首要地位。我也捍卫这样一种观点，即这种形式的赋权存在道德权利，并且有相应的义务赋予贫困者作为权利主张者的权力。司法赋权将与对贫困的道德错误的实质性描述的多元化以及更广泛的赋权概念相兼容。