Why Worry About Future Generations? (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics)

by Samuel Scheffler

When we reflect carefully about our reaction to the prospect of humanity’s destruction, we come to realize two complementary things. The first is that, because we implicitly understand our own lives as situated at a particular location within a temporally ordered succession of human lives, a threat to the survival of that order is also a threat to us and to the significance of our lives. So insofar as we take a genuine interest in the quality and significance of our lives, that interest must itself encompass a concern for the lives of our successors. The second is that our profound sadness and sense of loss in the face of humanity’s imminent destruction registers in part as a shock to ourselves, as an assault on our understanding of our own place in the world. So insofar as we are genuinely concerned with the fate of future generations—insofar as we exhibit a real love of humanity—our love and concern must themselves encompass a recognition of the damage that is done to us when humanity is destroyed.