Is it fair to leave the next generation a public debt? Is it defensible to impose legal rules on them through constitutional constraints? From combating climate change to ensuring proper funding for future pensions, concerns about ethics between generations are everywhere. In this volume sixteen philosophers explore intergenerational justice. Part One examines the ways in which various theories of justice look at the matter. These include libertarian, Rawlsian, sufficientarian, contractarian, communitarian, Marxian and reciprocity-based approaches. In Part Two, the authors look (...) more specifically at issues relevant to each of these theories, such as motivation to act fairly towards future generations, the population dimension, the formation of preferences through education and how they impact on our intergenerational obligations, and whether it is fair to rely on constitutional devices. (shrink)

When discussing the extinction of humanity, there does not seem to be any clear agreement about what ‘humanity’ really means. One aim of this paper is to show that it is a more slippery concept than it might at first seem. A second aim is to show the relationship between what constitutes or defines humanity and what gives it value. Often, whether and how we ought to prevent human extinction depends on what we take humanity to mean, which in turn (...) depends on what we value about humans. Finally, I will offer a definition of humanity that I argue offers a plausible account of when we might say humanity has gone extinct, and reflects what we value about humans, and relatedly, what many actually care about in terms of why we should be preserved. (shrink)

Desde los trabajos de Catriona McKinnon se ha empezado a hablar del crimen de postericidio. Este crimen es entendido como aquella conducta intencional o imprudente capaz de provocar la casi extinción de la humanidad. En este trabajo mostraré por qué el principio de daño (intergeneracional e internacional) puede aportar buenas razones en favor de la justificación moral de la criminalización del postericidio. Argumentaré que ni el problema de la no-identidad ni el de los daños por acumulación hablan en contra de (...) considerar que la criminalización del postericidio está moralmente justificada. -/- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- -/- The discussion on the crime of postericide has acquired a considerable boost since Catriona McKinnon’s writings. The crime of postericide is understood as an intentional or reckless conduct fit to bring about the near extinction of humanity. In this paper, I will show why the harm principle (intergenerational and international) is able to provide good reasons in favour of the moral justification of the criminalization of the postericide. I will argue that neither the non-identity problem nor the problem of the accumulative harms speak against considering the criminalization of the postericide morally justifiable. (shrink)

Climate change is often described as an existential risk to the human species, but this terminology has generally been avoided in the climate-justice literature in analytic philosophy. I investigate the source of this disconnect and explore the prospects for incorporating the idea of climate change as an existential risk into debates about climate justice. The concept of existential risk does not feature prominently in these discussions, I suggest, because assumptions that structure ‘ideal’ accounts of climate justice ensure that the prospect (...) of climate change as an extinction-level threat does not arise. Given persistent noncompliance with mitigation duties, however, we have reason to revisit these assumptions. I argue that the most promising way for theories of climate justice to account for the significance of existential risk is to look to the practices of protest and resistance in which a concern about extinction or global catastrophe is frequently given expression. (shrink)