Is It Future Generations That Are Important?

 

Why Worry About Future Generations? is Samuel Scheffler’s small book from his Uehiro Lectures at Oxford in 2016. It is a philosophically sophisticated reflection on the temporal parochialism that has led to the world’s extraordinary under-response to such risks as climate change. Scheffler argues that our concern properly goes beyond obligations for doing good (avoiding harm) to future populations because they are, like us, people. There are additional normative vectors, which may or may not be matters of either obligation or morality.

Half formed intent, change of heart, assault, accident, and failure to rescue. Should Clyde Griffiths have been electrocuted?

QUESTION 

Should the protagonist have been found guilty, and if so of what, had justice prevailed in the fictional rural New York courtroom of Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy?

Moral Obligations to the Future

Suppose that something like the classical utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham, were true. I don’t think it is true. However, consequentialist reasoning dominates most policy analysis and discussion, and consequences must play some role in any plausible moral theory. That being so, it is useful to take an unflinching look at what a generalized version of utilitarianism would have to say about the duty of those of us now alive have towards future populations including those of the deep future.

How “So help me God” Is Becoming Constitutional

It is by subscribing to the inaugural oath, as set out in the Constitution, that the US president elect becomes the US president. It reads: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Article II, Sec. 1.