As gerações, o rio e o oceano
(2017) Católica Law Review — Vol. I, p. 11-34 (2017)
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- Abstract
- (en) Following Jefferson’s suggestion, we seek to examine the analogy between nations and generations within a philosophical theory of justice and democracy concerned with our duties towards the members of future generations. We focus on three features common to intergenerational relations through a comparison with distinctive international situations. The first concerns the temporal immobility of persons beyond the period ranging from their birth to their death. This immobility implies that certain resources particular to certain periods are inaccessible to the generations living in other periods, and that might be a significant fact within certain theories of justice. We consider next the enclave traits unique to each generation. The intergenerational transference of resources is thus dependent on the active and passive cooperation of generations-in-transit. We show the way in which this feature matters to define our intergenerational duties. Finally, we stress the unidirectional nature of the passage of time (through an analogy with seaside states) and its effect on the temporal distribution of costs and benefits, and vulnerabilities. We examine its potential normative implications for the definition of a just distribution of power among generations. Through these three illustrations we hope to show the pertinence of this anatomic-analogical approach for the understanding of what we owe other (and in particular future) generations.
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Gosseries, A. (2017). As gerações, o rio e o oceano. Católica Law Review, I, 11-34. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/95680 (Original work published 2017)