In Why Posterity Matters Avner de-Shalit (dS) seeks a comprehensive theory of intergenerational justice. He believes this can serve as both a moral basis for environmental policies and as a guide for obligations to future generations. A theory of intergenerational justice, dS contends, will help us to address such concerns as how to distribute access to natural resources in the face of overuse, how to budget money for the future and the legitimacy of deficit spending and debt (given that we often now recognize that the environment is not a free commodity), and how to formulate appropriate population policies. Against the criticism that justice towards future generations differs little from that towards members of one’s own generation dS points out that 1) future productive potential for any given resource is greater than our present potential, 2) we can’t be sure of the needs and preferences of future generations, 3) our economic transfers with future generations are one-directional, 4) the size of the future population is unknown, and 5) many of today’s acts (with environmental and other implications) are irreversible. We have not really addressed environmental concerns, says dS, if we do not address the question of our obligation to future generations, and environmental issues are the most important reason for advancing a theory of intergenerational justice (yet, most environmental ethics have lacked an element of concern for future generations).
De-Shalit contends that concern about our obligations to future generations might, in fact, be the best approach to building an environmental ethic, given the resistance many have to regarding nonhuman animals or ecosystems as morally considerable. This seems controversial. Can the evils of factory farming be addressed with an intergenerational justice approach? This problem seems rooted in our ability, or lack thereof, to regard animals today as morally considerable objects of more humane treatment. De-Shalit may be a bit ambitious in hoping to address all types of environmental concerns in terms of intergenerational justice. Still, this will help us to deal with a great many environmental concerns. Related to the just noted concern is dS’s claim that "in the final analysis, environmental problems are social and political and can be solved politically" (10). I suspect all types of immoral acts are rooted more fundamentally in human motivations and inclinations beyond the scope of political intervention. We attempt political solutions, perhaps, because we lack a compelling moral framework out of which to build a moral vision for human actions, but I am dubious that we can solve all moral problems with political solutions. Still, I think dS is right to argue that intergenerational justice is about duties and not just charity (though it might be rooted in charity (caritas)) or supererogation.
In the first chapter, dS seeks to establish the notion of a transgenerational community upon which to build a theory of intergenerational justice. De-Shalit aims to be communitarian in his thinking about justice. His basic argument is that obligations to future generations derive from a sense of community, and it is built on the assumption (a good one, I think) that we are all bound to some kind of community which in some sense defines us and gives us our identity. So:
1) We are all bound to some community.
2) Communities constitute identities.
3) Therefore, it would be absurd to deny one’s obligation to one’s community and its members (that would entail denying one’s own identity).
De-Shalit contends that if we accept the idea of community in one generation (including obligations), then we should accept the idea of an intergenerational community.
Community is defined by dS as involving free and rational agency. (He offers in f.n. 7 what is, I think, a fair definition of "rational" as rooted in reasonably self-aware choices about one’s commitments.) Our continuing membership in a community is subject to critical examination. Only later in the chapter does dS clarify that the historical/Aristotelian community model that he rejects is in fact the type out of which we emerge (pp. 28-29). This is wise; we are certainly greatly influenced by and have our identities partially formed by communities into which we are born without our rationally choosing to be so-- even if we do not remain sympathetic to our communities of origin. Nevertheless, dS ultimately rejects the idea of our being deterministically bound to a community of origin.
Having begun to lay the groundwork for an understanding of community, dS extends his inquiry to the question of a transgenerational community. The key elements of a transgenerational community are cultural interaction, moral similarity, and reflection. One’s cultural environment includes language broadly construed to include symbols and codes through which one interpretively interacts with one’s world. A genuine community, says dS, is one where members regard the ideas embedded in the community as constitutive of their identities. De-Shalit acknowledges that the cultural interpretative framework of a community is always up for debate; the goal of debate, then, is to transform preferences rather than construct an interpretive framework out of compromise or procedural adjudication. If a set of lasting cultural values (yielding an interpretive framework) must be relatively continuous for a community to have any sense of continuity over time, then I wonder how the debate can happen over generations unless the debate is aimed simply to identify who still wants to be in and who wants to leave the community. That is, can the cultural values change, and if so, what gives a community a sense of continuity?
Regardless, one of the goals dS identifies for cultural interaction is the attainment of moral similarity. Indeed, the search for moral similarity can itself form a community (though dS is careful at every step to resist an endorsement of forced moral similarity or procedural adjudication of persistent dissimilarity). Having explicitly cut off the options of metaphysical or religiously based (pp. 15 and 12) moral similarity, dS forces me to wonder just what moral similarity he hopes for. The example of British linguistic practices of ending statements with questions probing for agreement is just downright hokey. I would think moral similarity would consist of something richer than that. Still, dS believes communities can form around shared moral and political values, and these shared values form an interpretive framework (he uses the metaphor of "moral spectacles"--one can see how closely related cultural interaction and the ensuing moral similarity are for dS). These common spectacles are the backdrop for political debate.
The procession from toward self-conscious moral similarity requires rational reflection as a normative requirement for community formation. De-Shalit describes a first stage of community as being historical/Aristotelian, but the second stage is achieved through rational reflection on whether one wants to remain associated with this or another community with which one achieves moral similarity. The second stage community, where dS is obviously invested, must be the result of reflection on the part of individual members.
As I envision a communitarian variety of intergenerational justice, three options come to mind for grounding obligations to future generations. One, which dS has clearly cut himself off from, is a form of obligation grounded in a broad, deterministic notion of community which encompasses all of humanity. A second is obligations to future members of much smaller, more restricted communities; the idea of small communities centered around cultural interaction and moral similarity seems closer to what dS is describing. But we can legitimately ask whether a comprehensive theory of intergenerational justice can arise out of multiple communities with what might be incommensurable differences in moral outlook? The third option would be to develop a comprehensive theory that successfully appeals to individual communities to feel obligated to their future generations (assuming that most communities anticipate future generations sharing their moral spectacles and thus continuing the community). This seems like a challenging task. The very way dS has set up his notion of a second stage transgenerational community virtually ensures significant differences in moral outlook between communities. One wonders how a comprehensive theory of intergenerational justice can appeal to such a diversity of communities. But dS has the rest of the book to answer to this concern. I am eager to see what he finds.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments by John Nolt:
It would help to say more about de-Shalit's notion of a community. I am not sure that he actually sticks to his own definition, but I take his definition on page 22 to amount to something like this:
It would have been good, too, to try to state more clearly his definitions
of cultural interaction, moral similarity and reflection, though once again
I think he is not too scrupulous in sticking to his own definitions.
Here's what I came up with:
Moral similarity =df common ideas and norms that are constitutive of individuals’ identities (28, 29); individuals are devoted to and their identities partly constituted by the ideals of the group. (Community’s ideas are a part of oneself in a way that mitigates the horror of death. p. 40)
Reflection =df rational debate, scrutiny (30)
Your factory farming example may be beside the point so far as de-Shalit is concerned. Though the term "environmental ethics" does in the very broad sense used in this course cover issues of animal ethics, including animal agriculture, I think de-Shalit uses it in a narrower sense. He probably would not consider the treatment of animals at factory farms to be a matter of environmental ethics. (Though the disposal of waste from such farms would be.) Still your general point that not all environmental issues are intergenerational is valid. There are, for example, forms of toxic pollution (for example, carbon monoxide) that break down quickly in the environment and so affect us but not future generations.
I think you might have said more about the invalidity of this inference:
2) Communities constitute identities.
3) Therefore, it would be absurd to deny one’s obligation to one’s community and its members (that would entail denying one’s own identity).