Future Persons in Kantian Contractualism

• Applicant: Dr. Jens Gillessen
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502219211

It has in recent years become widely accepted that agents must show consideration for yet unborn persons who may live far in the future. To take future persons into consideration is of downright dramatic importance with a view to climate change. For most of the expected harms of global warming are expected to afflict people who are not yet born. But what does the required attitude of consideration entail when the interests of future persons conflict with the moral rights and duties of already existing people? To answer this question based on a well-deliberated ethical theory poses notorious difficulties. One well-known source of uncertainty is the enduring fundamental disagreement in philosophical ethics between consequentialists, virtue ethicists, deontological ethicists und contractualists. The proposed project will investigate specific problems in connection with future people within moral contractualisms of Kantian provenance. The project’s focus will be on the as of yet most advanced such theory, namely Thomas M. Scanlon’s moral contractualism. The central difficulty is marked by Derek Parfit’s Non-Identity Problem. This problem afflicts arguments that reject the continued emission of greenhouse gases based on the claim that these emissions harm future persons. For the following is true of almost every future person: Whether he or she will ever come to exist depends on whether higher or lower levels of global emissions are chosen in the present. According to Parfit, large-scale events (e.g. global emissions reduction) have in the long run ‘identity-effects’: they have an effect on which persons will come to exist. Hence, present political decisions affect future persons almost exclusively in either of two ways: they prevent their existence, and they let different people come to exist in their place. Consequently, the Non-Identity Problem implies that virtually no future person is harmed by present emissions. It thus blocks a derivation of duties of justice with a view to future persons from a deontological prohibition of harming. It can be shown that the Non-Identity Problem afflicts a number of Kantian-contractualist theories as well. Whether Scanlon’s is among them has recently come under debate, the controversy touching on interpretative as well as systematic issues. The project aims to investigate generally whether a comprehensively satisfactory, Kantian-contractualist theory providing a foundation for duties of justice regarding future persons can be identified. In addition, the project aims to identify specific contributions that such a theory can be expected to make in the field of climate ethics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants