Intergenerational Justice: Rights and Responsibilities in an Intergenerational Polity

by Janna Thompson

Overview

In this timely study, Thompson presents a theory of intergenerational justice that gives citizens duties to past and future generations, showing why people can make legitimate demands of their successors and explaining what relationships between contemporary generations count as fair. What connects these various responsibilities and entitlements is a view about individual interests that both argues that individuals are motivated by intergenerational concerns, and that a polity that appropriately recognizes these interests must support and accept intergenerational responsibilities. The book ranges over the philosophical, ethical, political and environmental questions raised by intergenerational issues: how we can have duties to non-existent people, whether we can wrong the dead or be held responsible for what they did, what sacrifices we should make for our successors, and whether we have duties to people of the remote future. Encompassing the ethical problems created by demographic change, the ethical issues of population control and intergenerational implications of new technologies for creating people, this book will be of interest to those studying philosophy, politics, legal theory, and environmental studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135843090
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/01/2009
Series:	Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	198
File size:	443 KB

About the Author

Janna Thompson is an Associate Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. She is the author of Taking Responsibility for the Past and other articles and books on historical obligations, environmental ethics and intergenerational justice.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: Towards a Theory of Justice for an Intergenerational Polity

Chapter 2: Justice, Non-Identity and Intergenerational Relationships

Chapter 3: Partnership, Reciprocity and Identity

Chapter 4: Lifetime-Transcending Interests

Chapter 5: Lifetime-Transcending Interests and Duties to Past People

Chapter 6: Taking Responsibility for the Past

Chapter 7: Just Inheritance in an Intergenerational Polity

Chapter 8: Generational Rights and Duties

Chapter 9: Fair Shares

Chapter 10: Creating Future Generations

Chapter 11: Sustainability and Future Generations

Chapter 12: Intergenerational Global Justice

Notes

Bibliography

Index