Existing human beings stand in a unique relationship of asymmetrical influence over future generations. Our choices now can settle whether there are any human beings in the further future; how many will exist; what capacities and abilities they might have; and what the character of the natural world they inhabit is like. This volume, with contributions from both new voices and prominent, established figures in moral and political philosophy, examines three generally underexplored themes concerning morality and our relationship to future generations. First, would it be morally wrong to allow humanity to go extinct? Or do we have moral reasons to try and ensure that humanity continues into the indefinite future? Second, if humanity is to continue into the future, how many people should there be? And is it morally important whether they have lives that are of high quality or are just barely worth living? And third, how can we best make sense of the intuitive idea that by not taking action on climate change and preserving natural resources, we are in some way wronging future generations? This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

The things we do today may make life worse for future generations. But why should we care what happens to people who won't be born until after all of us are gone? Some philosophers have treated this as a question about our moral responsibilities, and have argued that we have duties of beneficence to promote the well-being of our descendants. Rather than focusing exclusively on issues of moral responsibility, Samuel Scheffler considers the broader question of why and how future generations matter to us. Although we lack a developed set of ideas about the value of human continuity, we are more invested in the fate of our descendants than we may realize. Implicit in our existing values and attachments are a variety of powerful reasons for wanting the chain of human generations to persist into the indefinite future under conditions conducive to human flourishing. This has implications for the way we think about problems like climate change. And it means that some of our strongest reasons for caring about the future of humanity depend not on our moral duty to promote the good but rather on our existing evaluative attachments and on our conservative disposition to preserve and sustain the things that we value. This form of conservatism supports rather than inhibits a concern for future generations, and it is an important component of the complex stance we take toward the temporal dimension of our lives.

This reprint of a collection of essays on problems concerning future generations examines questions such as whether intrinsic value should be placed on the preservation of mankind, what are our obligations to posterity, and whether potential people have moral rights.

Tim Mulgan develops an original theory of our obligations to future generations, based on a new rule-consequentialist account of the morality of individual reproduction. He brings together several different contemporary philosophical issues, including the demands of morality and international justice.

Peter Lawrence�s Justice for Future Generations breaks new ground by using a multidisciplinary approach to tackle the issue of what ethical obligations current generations have towards future generations in addressing the threat of climate change. This

How should we evaluate the ethics of procreation, especially the environmental consequences of reproductive decisions on future generations, in a resource-constrained world? While demographers, moral philosophers, and environmental scientists have separately discussed the implications of population size for sustainability, no one has attempted to synthesize the concerns and values of these approaches. The culmination of a half century of engagement with population ethics, Partha Dasgupta’s masterful Time and the Generations blends economics, philosophy, and ecology to offer an original lens on the difficult topic of optimum global population. After offering careful attention to global inequality and the imbalance of power between men and women, Dasgupta provides tentative answers to two fundamental questions: What level of economic activity can our planet support over the long run, and what does the answer say about optimum population numbers? He develops a population ethics that can be used to evaluate our choices and guide our sense of a sustainable global population and living standards. Structured around a central essay from Dasgupta, the book also features a foreword from Robert Solow; correspondence with Kenneth Arrow; incisive commentaries from Joseph Stiglitz, Eric Maskin, and Scott Barrett; an extended response by the author to them; and a joint paper with Aisha Dasgupta on inequalities in reproductive decisions and the idea of reproductive rights. Taken together, Time and the Generations represents a fascinating dialogue between world-renowned economists on a central issue of our time.