In the face of widespread environmental and social destabilization and growing uncertainty about the future of humanity, this collection of essays brings the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to the question of relations between generations to examine our ethical, political, and environmental obligations to future people. Emphasizing phenomenology’s rich reflections on the role of time in the constitution of the social-historical world and its relation to the environment, the essays interweave the central themes of mortality, natality, generativity, and
amor mundi to build vital bridges between new developments in both eco- and critical phenomenology and important work in intergenerational ethics. Together, the chapters reevaluate the traditional scope and foundational concepts of environmental ethics and social justice, paving the way for a revised understanding of intergenerational responsibilities, culminating in the key insight that future people are of us. The result is an invaluable conceptual toolkit for phenomenologists, ethicists, theorists, students, and activists concerned with environmental justice and climate ethics.
Tabela de Conteúdo
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why Phenomenology and Future Generations?
Matthias Fritsch, Ferdinando G. Menga, and Rebecca van der Post
Section 1. Generativity: The Future Is of Us and in Us
1. Generativity and Ethics: A Phenomenological Approach
Mario Vergani
2. Responding to the Claims of Those Who Shall Come After Us
Bernhard Waldenfels
3. Generativity, Generations, and Generative Intergenerational Solidarity: Untimely Reflections on the Way We Live After One Another, With One Another, and For One Another, in Its Unforeseeable Historicity
Burkhard Liebsch
Section 2. The Politics of Human Generations
4. Absences that Matter: Phenomenological Insights into (the Predicaments of ) Intergenerational Justice
Ferdinando G. Menga
5. How Can We Take Claims of Future Generations Seriously? Combining Different Perspectives in Our Action
Eva Buddeberg
6. Jonasian Grounding of Future-Oriented Responsibility and the Idea of the Human
Hiroshi Abe
7. ‘The Race of the Poor’: Intergenerational Lessons from Anarchist Eugenics
Anne O’Byrne
Section 3. Amor Mundi in Presentist Modernity
8. Critical Theory, Natal Alienation, Future People
Matthias Fritsch
9. In Our Element
Rebecca van der Post
10. From Love of World to Love of Earth: Taking Responsibility for the Future of the Planet
Kelly Oliver
Contributors
Index
Sobre o autor
Matthias Fritsch is Full Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Montreal. Among other books, he is the author of
The Promise of Memory: History and Politics in Marx, Benjamin, and Derrida, also published by SUNY Press.
Ferdinando G. Menga is Full Professor of Legal Philosophy and Philosophy of Politics at the Law School of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, Italy. He is the author of
Ausdruck, Mitwelt, Ordnung, among many other books.
Rebecca van der Post is a concert violinist and doctoral candidate in Interdisciplinary Humanities (HUMA) at Concordia University, Montreal.