Contrasting Theories of Intergenerational Justice: Just Savings or Capabilities

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Vanderbeck ◽  
Kristina Diprose ◽  
Chen Liu ◽  
Gill Valentine ◽  
Katie McQuaid ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Intergenerational Justice

Our Obligation to Future Generations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amartya Sen
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
Effective Power ◽  
Basic Plane

Our reasoned sense of obligations to others can arise from at least three possible sources: cooperation, having caused harm, and effective power to improve suffering. The last source, this chapter argues, is particularly important in considering our obligations to future generations. It draws on a line of reasoning that takes us well beyond contractarian motivations to the idea of the “impartial spectator” as developed by Adam Smith. The interests of future generations come into the story because they are important in our attempt to be impartial spectators. The obligation of power contrasts with the mutual obligations for cooperation at the basic plane of motivational justification. In the context of climate concerns and intergenerational justice, this asymmetry-embracing approach seems to allow an easier entry for understanding our obligations.

Malnutrition, Public Health, and Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 570-584
Author(s):  
Jessica Fanzo
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Food Security ◽  
Overweight And Obesity ◽  
Micronutrient Deficiencies ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Environmentally Sustainable ◽  
Nutritious Food ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Society Today

A major challenge for society today is how to secure and provide plentiful, healthy, and nutritious food for all in an environmentally sustainable and safe manner, while also addressing the multiple burdens of undernutrition, overweight and obesity, stunting and wasting, and micronutrient deficiencies, particularly for the most vulnerable. There are considerable ethical questions and trade-offs that arise when attempting to address this challenge, centered around integrating nutrition into the food security paradigm. This chapter attempts to highlight three key ethical challenges: the prioritization of key actions to address the multiple burdens of malnutrition, intergenerational justice issues of nutrition-impacted epigenetics, and the consequences of people’s diet choices, not only for humanity but also for the planet.

scholarly journals ARE THERE OBLIGATIONS WITHOUT RIGHTS?

2010 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnes Heller
Keyword(s):  
Future Generation ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Negative Sense ◽  
Prospective Responsibility ◽  
Present Understanding

In all command-obedience relations of asymmetric reciprocity, obligations or rather duties do not go normally with corresponding rights. There are no rights related to such relationships, at least not in the present  understanding of the word “right”, since they are prerogatives. But there are obligations based on morals, if not on rights, also in relations of  asymmetric reciprocity. Only in a relation of symmetric reciprocity do rights appear as foundations (archai) for claims, both in a positive, and in a  negative sense. We have obligations to future generations, even  responsibilities for living up to those obligations, but future generations cannot have rights. There is not, and cannot be, symmetric reciprocity between us and any future generation, in fact no reciprocity at all; there are obligations without corresponding rights.The cases of prospective responsibility, of being in charge, also implies obligations irrespective of the circumstance whether the parties towards whom we have obligations are the bearers of rights or not. Intergenerational justice does not presuppose extant rights whereas potential rights are just projections or metaphors with little relevance, for they are not binding.

Justifying Climate Engineering?

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Stelzer
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Climate Engineering ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Lesser Evil

AbstractThis paper analyses four justifications for the deployment of climate engineering that have evolved in the debate (cost-effectiveness, buying time, indispensability, and last resort / lesser evil). The analysis includes basic assumptions, arguments and problems of these justifications with special attention given to aspects of intergenerational justice.

scholarly journals The Circumstances of Intergenerational Justice

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Brandstedt
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Practical Problem ◽  
Intergenerational Justice ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Moral Constructivism

AbstractSome key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume and John Rawls. I argue that we should accept the upshot of their idea, that justice is context sensitive, even if this at first sight seems to invalidate intergenerational justice. On the basis of moral constructivism, I subsequently provide a fresh reading of the doctrine according to which it conveys the idea that justice is the solution to a practical problem. However, as the problem background is evolving, we need to properly characterize the relevant practical problem in order to make ethical theorizing relevant. Contrary to what has been claimed, the circumstances of justice do not then clash with intergenerational justice, but are the necessary presuppositions for its advancement.

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