What Has Posterity Ever Done for Me

Future generations" play a key role in current political debates. In the context of the climate crisis especially, political controversies are often framed as moral problems of "intergenerational justice." This article aims to historicize the use of the concept of "future generations" in modern political discourse and to uncover its long-and often ambivalent-history. Its main argument is that talking about "future generations" was part of an attempt to integrate (distant) futures into the political discourse of the time. The first part of the article outlines a theoretical perspective on the relationship between generations and temporalities. The second part focuses on how anticipating "future generations" became an important part of the history of utopian thinking and political planning in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the realm of demographic and economic discussions. The third part analyzes the emergence of "future ethics" and "intergenerational justice" as important political discourses in the 1970s. This part refers both to the academic debates about "future generations" and to the way political decision-makers used the concept to legitimize their policies. The article argues that the concept of "future generations" should not be taken as an ethical principle that transcended the political debates of the present. Rather, it was itself the result of intense political controversies

Ambivalence · Argument (complex analysis · Climate justice · Context (archaeology · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Realm · Social science · Sociology · Temporalities · Climate Change and Geoengineering · History · Law

• The Time of Politics, the Politics of Time, and Politicized Time

  Open Access•Fernando Esposito, Tobias Becker•History and Theory•2023

  Incluir item

• The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

  Joseph A Schumpeter, John Maynard Keynes•Journal of the American…•1936

  Incluir item

• The Imperative of Responsibility

  Hans Jonas•The Imperative of Responsibility•1984

  Incluir item

• Moral Problems of Population

  Jan Narveson, Sherwood J B Sugden•The Monist•1973

  Incluir item

• Das Problem der Generationen

  Open Access•Karl Mannheim•Schriften zur Wirtschafts- und…•2023

  Incluir item

• Representing future generations

  D F Thompson•Critical Review of International…•2010

  Incluir item

• Giving a Voice to Posterity – Deliberative Democracy and Representation of Future People

  Open Access•Kristian Skagen Ekeli•Journal of Agricultural and…•2005

  Incluir item

• Are We Ready for An Ecological Morality

  Ernest Partridge•Environmental Ethics•1982

  Incluir item

• The Imperative of Responsibility

  Hwa Yol Jung•Environmental Ethics•1986

  Incluir item

• A Mathematical Theory of Saving

  Frank Plumpton Ramsey•The Economic Journal•1928

  Incluir item

• Against Periodization

  Open Access•Helge Jordheim•History and Theory•2012

  Incluir item

• The Politics of Expertise in Congress

  Jeffrey K Stine, Bruce Bimber•Technology and Culture•1998

  Incluir item