Temporal Parochialism and Its Discontents
Many of us exhibit a form of temporal parochialism. We lack a rich set of evaluative resources for thinking about our relations to generations other than our own. Yet we are hardly indifferent to the fate of our successors, and issues like climate change that implicate our attitudes toward the future generate intense interest. Many philosophers writing about future generations focus on issues of moral responsibility, devoting special attention to the puzzles of “population ethics.” They seek to identify a suitable principle of beneficence to help resolve those puzzles. This chapter outlines a different approach. Rather than focusing solely on issues of moral responsibility, this book will investigate the question of how future generations feature in our practical and evaluative thought as a whole. The aim is to explore the evaluative commitments that may be latent in our existing attitudes, and so to enrich our thinking about future generations.