Abstract

I have had extraordinary teachers who gave me far more than I was owed. Those gifts put a distinctive normative pressure upon me; I cannot ever repay the the gifts that were given me, but I can, and should, pay them forward. Not to do so would be a normative failing. Thinkers as varied as Jesus, Benjamin Franklin, Emerson, and Paul Erdős ​(of Erdős number fame) all seem to agree that we face some kind of injunction to pay it forward. This paper asks why: why would receipt of an undeserved benefit from one party generate any normative pressure to do likewise for a third party? I show that attempts to explain the phenomenon of paying it forward via an appeal to beneficence, gratitude, or fairness all fail, and so we must look elsewhere. In bipolar relationships, like friendships, we are subject to norm of balance or harmony; when the other relates to me an especially generous way, I should in turn live up to that example and so relate back. Balance in bipolar relationships is a diachronic norm—healthy relationships sustain and thrive on local imbalances—but a relationship which remains one-sided is thereby flawed. I argue that so, too, are we subject to a norm of balance across generations. When we cannot or should not pay a gift back and achieve balance within a bipolar relationship, we can instead pay that gift forward and achieve balance across a larger time horizon. For me not to go above and beyond for my students would leave that broader multi-generational relationship—stretching from my teacher to me to my students—imbalanced with me at its normative focal point. In this paper I articulate and defend an intergenerational balance norm, showing that paying it forward arises within multi-generational relationships like that connecting me, my teachers, and my students—even though it does not always seem like that on the surface. Having defended an account of inter-generational balance, I ask to whom one can pay it forward, arguing that one can successfully achieve inter-generational balance with recipients quite different from one's initial giver(s). The upshot: among the tasks of responding to deep asymmetries and dependencies in our lives is the maintenance and forging of multi-generational relationships within which we can achieve an ideal of balance.​