The globalised world
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On the
normative level we can choose among various options, which lamentably
I cannot discuss here to a full extent because they involve a complex reasoning in
moral philosophy. Given that the motivation for taking action should be accessible to
informed citizens all around the globe, a first requirement is to avoid ‘thick’ theories
that involve notions and mental procedures open only to professional elites within a
single cultural realm. A second requirement favours options as transcultural as pos-
sible. This makes philosophical heavyweights from the West, such as the theory of
justice, hardly eligible, even regardless of this theory’s own difficulties with the prob-
lem of future generations.
11
In the choosing of a foundation of our care for future
generations, the options must remain open according to one’s own cultural and
philosophical orientation, and all claims to possess a trump card in this competition
are not productive. It is in this spirit that I am now giving a brief account of my own
choice, which moves from the fact of the transgenerational chain of parents who at
every turn of the age have generated and raised children, always trying to protect and
improve the conditions for their children to grow up in. Except in cases of genocide
and enslavement, each generation has acknowledged to the following ones the right
to protect and improve those conditions, while the assumption that the chain can be
continued over time is a hidden presupposition of all cultures – a very few nihilistic
thinkers excluded. Now, doing nothing in order to prevent global commons from
being spoiled either by nuclear explosions or catastrophic climate change means
accepting that the chain can be broken up and future generations left on their own
in a life-unfriendly environment causally dependent on our acts and omissions. But
why should we not accept this outcome? For two reasons.
If we accept it, we would infringe the most elementary and universal obligation:
‘what you hate, do not do to anyone’ (Tobit 4:15). I have quoted this formulation
of the Golden Rule from the Old Testament, but it can be found also in the Gos-
pels as well as in Confucianism and in ancient India; apart from religions, Kant’s
categorical imperative can in rough terms be seen as a secularised reformulation of
it. Further elaborations on the reasons for preserving the transgenerational chain,
which cannot be unfolded here, would include the notions of responsibility, vulner-
ability, trust.
The second reason is that not standing up to our responsibility to the genera-
tions of the (far) future risks making our own life poor of meaning, which is an
impalpable but essential resource, since if men, women and civilisations were not
able to give their life a meaning, this would much more frequently end up in
self-destruction or aggressiveness and despair. Now, not only raising children, but
counting on the continuation of human reproduction as cultural, not merely bio-
logical perspective is a condition that helps most persons make sense of their lives.
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