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

by Samuel Scheffler

Our concern for future generations is at once more straightforward and apparently more mysterious. It is straightforward because it is simply a concern that the chain of human generations should be extended into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. What makes this concern seem mysterious is what I have called our temporal parochialism. Most of us lack any clear or well-developed conception of the value of human continuity or of the values that we hope will be realized in the future. Nor do we exhibit any normatively articulate understanding of the importance to us of future generations or of our own relations to them. If I am right, though, our concern for future generations gives the lie to, or at any rate shows the limits of, our temporal parochialism. When, in imagination, we contemplate the imminent disappearance of the human race, and when we react to that prospect with feelings of loss and sadness and even despair, we make it clear that, despite our tendency to overlook the fact, the survival of human beings matters deeply to us. The point can be put more strongly. Suppose we agree that love is an evaluative attitude that represents its objects in a favorable light and includes a strong concern for their flourishing. And suppose we agree that to love a person is, among other things, to be vulnerable to a wide range of context-dependent emotions, including, most notably, distress if the person is harmed or damaged or destroyed. So too...