Future generations as rightholders
2016 (English)In: Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, ISSN 1369-8230, E-ISSN 1743-8772, Vol. 19, no 6, p. 680-698Article in journal (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Many people believe that we have obligations with respect to future generations
concerning the state of the environment that we pass on to them.
Apart from the practical problem of people not really acting on such
beliefs, there are also conceptual or philosophical issues that make these
obligations problematic. The so-called non-identity problem is especially
difficult: depending on which courses of action we adopt, different people
will be born in the future, which means that even future people who due
to our behavior will live under fairly poor circumstances might not have
any ground for complaint. Had we not behaved as we did, they would not
even have existed. It is argued here that, at least within a rights-theoretical
approach, the non-identity problem can be solved by moving from
considering individual rights to generational rights, rights which future
generations hold qua generations.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Taylor & Francis, 2016. Vol. 19, no 6, p. 680-698
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-2029DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2014.966231ISI: 000396576100003Local ID: 19849OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-2029DiVA, id: diva2:1398771
2020-02-272020-02-272022-06-27Bibliographically approved