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In this timely study, Thompson presents a theory of intergenerational justice that gives citizens duties to past and future generations, showing why people can make legitimate demands of their successors and explaining what relationships between contemporary generations count as fair. What connects these various responsibilities and entitlements is a view about individual interests that both argues that individuals are motivated by intergenerational concerns, and that a polity that appropriately recognizes these interests must support and accept intergenerational responsibilities. The book ranges over the philosophical, ethical, political and environmental questions raised by intergenerational issues: how we can have duties to non-existent people, whether we can wrong the dead or be held responsible for what they did, what sacrifices we should make for our successors, and whether we have duties to people of the remote future. Encompassing the ethical problems created by demographic change, the ethical issues of population control and intergenerational implications of new technologies for creating people, this book will be of interest to those studying philosophy, politics, legal theory, and environmental studies.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: Towards a Theory of Justice for an Intergenerational Polity
Chapter 2: Justice, Non-Identity and Intergenerational Relationships
Chapter 3: Partnership, Reciprocity and Identity
Chapter 4: Lifetime-Transcending Interests
Chapter 5: Lifetime-Transcending Interests and Duties to Past People
Chapter 6: Taking Responsibility for the Past
Chapter 7: Just Inheritance in an Intergenerational Polity
Chapter 8: Generational Rights and Duties
Chapter 9: Fair Shares
Chapter 10: Creating Future Generations
Chapter 11: Sustainability and Future Generations
Chapter 12: Intergenerational Global Justice
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Janna Thompson is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Taking Responsibility for the Past and other articles and books on historical obligations, environmental ethics and intergenerational justice.
Summary
Focusing on contemporary social issues-- the environmental crisis, population growth and demographic change, and the question of whether reparations are owed to indigenous peoples--this study presents a theory of intergenerational justice that gives citizens duties to past and future generations, and explains what relationships between contemporary generations count as fair.
