There is broad consensus that climate change is a genuinely ethical problem and raises questions of intra- and intergenerational justice in particular. It is also undisputed that states are among the central collective agents that bear intergenerational responsibility for effective climate action. One of the still controversial issues in climate ethics is the question whether and to what extent responsibility can be attributed to individuals for their actions associated with emissions. The problem lies in identifying such actions by individuals as (...) morally relevant actions due to their causal insignificance. The specific characteristics of climate change could also give the impression that the concept of responsibility needs to be modified or replaced by a concept of collective responsibility if the actions of individuals in the context of climate change are to have moral relevance. In this article, however, I would like to develop a proposal according to which individuals can be attributed responsibility without revising our current concept of responsibility. The guiding thesis is that the collective and intergenerational context of climate change modifies the form of actions associated with emissions. This also influences the moral evaluation of these actions, as actions associated with emissions become subject to justification through their connection to the global carbon budget. (shrink)

The collective formation of a people or group is a central, yet difficult concept both for pragmatic Hegelians and in Hannes Kuchs’ book, Wirtschaft, Demokratie, Liberaler Sozialismus (2023). On the one hand, there is something deeply democratic about the idea that a society transforms itself with individuals constantly discussing, defining and re-defining what counts as good for them. On the other hand, critics have rightly worried that such an approach is relativist and implies that any system can count as just, (...) as long as it fits shared beliefs. In this article I analyze and criticize Kuch’s argument the background of philosophical debates on collective, democratic progress and 'real utopia.'. (shrink)

This essay undertakes a definitional approach to the concept of the polity in order to clarify the social reference point of common good-oriented policies. Following John Dewey, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Georg W. F. Hegel, I argue for a socialholistic understanding of the term: accordingly, the polity is an autonomous moral actor composed of human persons who not only understand but also actively affirm their socio-political cooperative relationships, have a shared worldview (“common sense”) and are concerned with the production and protection (...) of communal goods. A polity understood in this way constitutes, as I suggest, an ideal of political coexistence and collaboration that provides orientation and meaningful projects in the face of current phenomena of polarization and alienation in modern democracies. (shrink)

Despite the desire of most people to enable at least their own children and grandchildren to have a worthwhile existence on Earth, we can repeatedly observe individual and collective ecological, economic, political, and thus societal actions that contradict this wish. This is currently particularly evident in the context of the climate crisis. This ambivalence points to a motivational problem, or at the very least, to the challenge of translating one's intentions into actual actions. The motivation problem constitutes one of the (...) core issues in future ethics. How can we foster motivation for human concern that goes beyond individual close relationships and includes the benefit of future generations? This article offers a proposal to address this question. The practical principle of care, as it has long been a topic, particularly in the field of care ethics, holds significant potential to bridge the gap between ideals and reality, by integrating psychological and normative insights. To fulfil our long-term responsibilities, a concern for care that is individually and collectively recognized and internalized through cognitive and moral development processes has the potential to unfold motivational force. To support this thesis, the article locates the principle of care within the discourse of future ethics and provides a systematic account of care as an ethical principle. The interplay of internal development and external conditions can empower and encourage individuals to overcome obstacles consciously and wilfully in their practical actions and, consequently, in their life practices – and thus serve as a motivation to implement convictions recognized as good. In this way, individuals can be genuinely convinced to act sustainably for good reasons based on values and to take responsibility for the future, including distant, unknown generations. Although we cannot know the needs and specific normative conceptions of these future generations yet, this approach offers the opportunity to ensure a good life on Earth in the future. (shrink)

Pacifism is not a principle, but an attitude of egalitarian responsiveness to every individual person. Engaging in dialogue with Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil, whose approaches are both shaped through the experience of war, I explore a pacifist attitude that highlights the responsiveness to each human being's refusal to suffer violence. The Other in Levinas and the Impersonal in Weil are interpreted as a fundamental resistance of every human being against violence. This resistance is rooted in human vulnerability. This vulnerability (...) and the corresponding resistance against violence are understood as the sources of a pacifist attitude. Pacifism is expressed in a sensitivity to the demands of those involved in war and in the responsibility for every individual, which demands of us, above all, escape aid for refugees and humanitarian and medical support. However, this attitude might also oblige us to provide violent support. If another person is attacked, I might be obliged to support this person exclusively and to fight against the attacking person – yet, without being allowed to ignore the claims of the attacker not to be hurt herself. Even in the midst of a politically necessary counterviolence, pacifism shows itself in a wavering certainty and the ethical unease about the harm my support will do. Accordingly, counterviolence might be politically necessary, but remains ethically ambiguous. Thus, pacifists cannot be concerned about principles or convictions, because facing the violence that another is threatened to suffer, one's own claims are outdone by the claims of this other. The explored pacifist attitude then leads to contemporary pacifist positions of Judith Butler and Adriana Cavarero, who might help to politically contextualise the ethical dictums of Levinas and Weil. Following Butler and Cavarero, pacifism is understood as an attitude that expresses the ethical within the political realm, but which has to be politically enabled itself. Hence, pacifism is also directed against a military-industrial complex and a militaristic spirit in general that force us to close off against claims of the other person and to take unconquerable and unambiguous positions in war times. Pacifism, hence, calls for a fundamental social transformation. (shrink)

In Wirtschaft, Demokratie und liberaler Sozialismus, Hannes Kuch argues for the strengths of liberal socialism in terms of its account of social justice and the emergence of a common morality. Kuch defends this alternative to capitalism in particular against the conception of a property-owning democracy, which he deems to be more susceptible to the emergence of exploitation and the development of justice-adverse dispositions among its participants. However, from a liberal perspective, the losses associated with the fundamental restriction of capital ownership (...) and freedom of contract may be underestimated in his argument. (shrink)

In Wirtschaft, Demokratie und liberaler Sozialismus argumentiert Hannes Kuch für die gerechtigkeits- und sittlichkeitstheoretischen Stärken des liberalen Sozialismus. Kuch verteidigt diese Alternative zum Kapitalismus insbesondere gegen die Eigentumsdemokratie, die aus seiner Sicht anfälliger für das Aufkommen von Ausbeutung und die Herausbildung gerechtigkeitsadverser Dispositionen unter ihren TeilnerhmerInnen ist. Allerdings sind aus liberaler Perspektive die Einbußen, die mit der grundlegenden Einschränkung von Kapitaleigentum und Vertragsfreiheit einhergehen, nicht zu unterschätzen.

The article discusses Hannes Kuch's critique of a prominent assumption liberal theories of justice make: norms guiding economic behavior and political-moral norms are to be considered separately. Against this assumption, Kuch argues in his study ‘Economy, Democracy and Liberal Socialism’ that the economic sphere plays a central role in enabling and realizing democratic justice. In doing so, Kuch problematizes the fact that the economic sphere in its current form has a predominantly negative influence on the moral education of subjects. Following (...) on from this, Kuch ascribes a normative primacy to the political sphere, while he ascribes an empirical primacy to the economic sphere with regard to the moral education of subjects. The commentators criticize Kuch's position to the effect that it postulates a problematic contrast between an amoral economic sphere and an idealized moral political sphere. Besides an internal logical-argumentative problem, this contrast proves to be particularly problematic with regard to the analysis of real-political and global-economic power relations. The commentators therefore argue for a more differentiated analysis that recognizes the moral ambivalence of the two spheres and their morally formative and destructive potential. (shrink)

Irrespective of whether the appropriate means of addressing the climate crisis, the future of social security systems or the right actions in the face of a colonial legacy are discussed – a number of topics have been increasingly taken up in recent public and academic debates, placing ethical questions relating to intergenerational relationships at the forefront of the agenda. However, within the field of ethics, approaches that are characterized by a focus on the individual and the present – and that (...) are therefore only partially suitable for addressing such questions and problems – still dominate the field. This observation serves as a starting point for the topical collection on intergenerational perspectives in ethics. The following introductory article aims to initiate discussion on this topic. To this end, we outline the debate on intergenerationality in the ethical discourse, in a first step. After this, we provide a short introduction to the concept of generation, which plays a central role in the overall discussion. Afterwards, the aim and structure of this topical collection are highlighted, before concluding with a brief overview of the six topical contributions. (shrink)

This article offers a response to massive environmental destabilization by linking the promising accounts of intergenerational justice as turn-taking with the proposals for a geokinetic view of earth and the idea of a second Copernican revolution. The argument will proceed in four steps. First, I suggest that recent proposals calling on us to respond to the Anthropocene by ‘being geologically human’, that is, by situating lived human time in geological time, should be supplemented by generational time, and thus, by the (...) ethics of human generations following one another. To conceptualize intergenerational justice, I review the proposals for human generations taking turns with the earth. I then suggest that, however, the earth is not an external, exchangeable object of turn-taking (as e.g. a bicycle would be). Rather than being an object that we may choose to use or not, earth is constitutive of generations being able to come about and take turns in the first place. In this constitutive sense, earth also takes turns with us. To further specify this idea, I discuss the so-called ‘second Copernican revolution’, according to which the earth not only moves around the sun, but is internally on the move, its geokinetic processes co-constituting human generations. If the argument goes through, the environmental crises in our very midst should be understood as demanding a reconceptualization of time as always already intergenerational and space as counter-Copernican. (shrink)

In the sixth chapter of his study, Wirtschaft, Demokratie und liberaler Sozialismus, Hannes Kuch examines moral pathologies of capitalist society. He argues that such pathologies arise when learning experiences in the market lead to attitudes that have negative effects on other social spheres and undermine the democratic ethos. In this comment, I address two aspects of his thesis: its empirical foundations in behavioural economics, and the new analysis of authoritarianism that it proposes. Kuch’s diagnosis of the moral pathologies of capitalism (...) is based in part on studies in behavioural economics about the moral consequences of market relations. These studies show that market relations can lead to the erosion of moral motives for action in the long term. This tendency can be counteracted if market relations are embedded in constitutional institutions and a trust-building culture. However, the studies that Kuch discusses relate to decisions in which subjects have to choose between money and moral action or have to distribute money, and not to market relations in which competition and rivalry play a role. I argue that such competitive situations can be particularly erosive to moral relations because they pit subjects against each other. The question is whether it is possible to find effective antidotes to this erosion of moral motives. Kuch’s analysis of authoritarianism suggests that people in capitalism learn that the right of the strongest is a legitimate principle of action, and that the normalization of such principles in dealing with weaker groups plays an essential role in explaining the new authoritarianism. This is plausible. In particular, I believe that a neoliberal version of the meritocratic idea underlies this development. Subjects see themselves as winners or losers in constant status competitions, and if they are on the losing side, they compensate for the impending loss of status by oppressing weaker groups. The question is whether a less radical reaction of this kind could also threaten market socialism, because it shows subjects even more transparently than capitalism how much value their own social contribution has. Can market socialism counteract such a development? (shrink)

Moral Contractualism provides a compelling framework for understanding what we owe to each other and seems promising as a non-consequentialist intergenerational moral theory as well. However, the non-identity problem presents a critical challenge. Specifically, the question arises as to whether future individuals can have an objection against the principles allowing an act even if the future individual’s existence is contingent on this act and their lives will be worth living. A prominent response to this challenge is to understand the objections (...) of future individuals in a "non-comparative" way. The idea is that, whereas future persons cannot object that they are made worse off by our actions, they can complain that they are made badly off in some sense. It remains unclear how to best understand such a position within Moral Contractualism, whether it offers a coherent solution to the non-identity problem, and whether its substantial implications are convincing. This paper critically examines the possibilities and limitations of a non-comparative contractualist approach, concluding that non-comparative wellbeing-based objections above the threshold of a life worth living are not plausible. Consequently, a non-comparative response to the nonidentity problem referring to the well-being of future persons can, at best, provide a partial solution for Moral Contractualists. (shrink)

The Book „Economy, Democracy, and Liberal Socialism“ is a milestone in combining Rawlsian thought and critical theory in order to argue for market socialism with a strong form of economic democracy. This introduction gives an overview over the articles in the special issue discussing this proposal.

In a series of writings, the Australian philosopher Janna Thompson (1942 - 2022) developed a political ethics of intergenerational justice. She combines the responsibilities of the present in regard of the injustice of previous generations with the responsibilities of the present for the injustice to those not yet born. Her political ethics of intergenerational justice contains an argument for the justification of intergenerational care and responsibility, which is based on vulnerability and dependency in intergenerational practices. It criticises the notion of (...) future generations as unconnected, as yet non-existent individuals and instead describes society as a diachronic continuum of interdependent members of overlapping, interconnected generations whose members share duties and responsibilities for predecessors and successors. This article attempts to reconstruct Thompson's argument for "temporal vulnerability", i.e. for the justification of a responsibility for the well-being of unborn future generations, in the context of climate ethics. At the centre are not only the actions or decisions that are subject to norms, or the rights of future generations, but social practices that, by continuing collectively, contain a material normativity in the present from the future. The duties of the present can be recognized by examining whether these practices are justifiable vis-à-vis the future. These are duties of care and responsibility that arise from intergenerational relationships. This argument is confronted with two questions: 1) Does its validity depend, as Thompson seems to suggest, on presuppositions of a contract theory of justice? 2) How strong seems the normative binding force that emanates from her argument and how does this binding force work? Through her diachronic approach, Thompson offers an approach to intergenerational justice that looks both backwards into the past and forward into the future, leading to a nuanced understanding of the responsibility of the present generation living in structures already established by previous generations. Their responsibility can be specified in terms of what is in their power to do to stop a harmful dynamic. (shrink)

In his theory of social freedom, Axel Honneth argues that freedom can only be realized in and through social cooperation. Accordingly, a theory of freedom must therefore start from an analysis of socially instituted forms of cooperation. This approach not only allows for a reconstruction of normative ideals within modern institutions but also aims at revealing obstacles to their full realization. However, in contrast to his earlier theory of recognition, Honneth now assumes that problematic social developments do not necessarily result (...) in individual suffering. Against this backdrop, the article argues that Honneth’s theory of social freedom needs to account for at least mild forms of social suffering. To achieve this, the article explores a line of argumentation that Honneth's recent approach has left underdeveloped. It will be argued that individuals must be able to interpret their needs and interests without constraints to determine if they can be met through social cooperation. The article develops two possibilities, hinted at in Honneth's theory, to illuminate such practices of self-interpretation: Parsons’ theory of value internalization and Honneth's earlier theory of recognition. Both argue that the ability to interpret one’s needs and interests rests on a psychological foundation laid during early primary socialization. Social misdevelopments and pathologies that distort the understanding and articulation of those needs thus must lead to frustration and, consequently, social suffering. However, since both internalization and recognition theory have clear deficits in the context of a theory of social freedom, the article concludes by calling for further conceptual work on social freedom and suffering. (shrink)

Wie sollen individuelle, miteinander konkurrierende Ansprüche gegeneinander abgewogen werden? Die gerechtigkeitstheoretischen Herausforderungen wachsen, wenn künftige Personen mit einbezogen werden. Mit dem Schritt von rein intra- zu intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit sind die Ansprüche nicht mehr nur im Raum, sondern auch in der Zeit verteilt. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Frage, auf welche Weise die so verteilten Ansprüche zusammengeführt werden sollen. Dazu wird zwischen einer synchronen und einer diachronen Gerechtigkeitskonzeption unterschieden. Erstere sieht die zeitliche Dimension als Erweiterung der räumlichen: Zunächst setzt sie jene (...) Ansprüche, die zu einem gegebenen Zeitpunkt innerhalb einer Generation existieren, zueinander in Beziehung. Die so zusammengeführten generationellen Ansprüche werden anschließend entlang der Zeit gegeneinander abgewogen. Letztere hingegen verwirft die Generation als relevante Gruppe, um die Bedürfnisse des Individuums zu vertreten. Stattdessen basiert sie auf der Idee transgenerationeller Gemeinschaften. Sie stellt individuelle Ansprüche zunächst innerhalb der jeweiligen, zeitlich ausgedehnten Gemeinschaft einander gegenüber. Anschließend setzt sie dann diese Gemeinschaften zueinander in Beziehung. Bestehende Theorien generationenübergreifender Gerechtigkeit verfolgen dabei zumeist eine Extensionsstrategie: Sie erweitern eine bestehende intragenerationelle Theorie um die zeitliche Dimension hin zur Intergenerationalität. Dies entspricht einer synchronen Konzeption, die jedoch oftmals nichts expliziert wird. Demgegenüber entwickelt der Beitrag zwei Argumente für die diachrone Alternative. Konzentrieren wir uns weniger auf Forderungen ganzer Generationen, sondern auf Bedürfnisse künftiger Mitglieder unserer transgenerationellen Gemeinschaften, so werden wir, erstens, der motivationalen Herausforderung besser gerecht werden. Sie besteht in der Beantwortung der Frage, warum wir im heutigen Handeln überhaupt Raum für nachfolgende Interessen schaffen sollten. Innerhalb transgenerationeller Gemeinschaften stehen diese nachfolgenden Interessen jedoch nicht in Isolation, sondern sind durch Interaktion innerhalb der Gemeinschaft geprägt und erlauben uns damit, unsere eigenen Interessen über das eigene Leben hinaus zu verwirklichen. Zweitens können wir so auch der epistemischen Herausforderung begegnen. Diese stellt sich angesichts der Frage, worin eigentlich die nachfolgenden Interessen bestehen. Greifen wir sie nicht als kollektive Wünsche ganzer Generationen auf, sondern als die Pläne und Projekte künftiger Mitglieder unserer Gemeinschaft, so wird es leichter sein, vom Heute auf die Zukunft und ihre Bedürfnisse zu schließen. Die Forderung, künftige Ansprüche im heutigen Handeln zu berücksichtigen, wirft die Frage nach dem ‚Warum‘ und die nach dem ‚Wie‘ auf. Beiden kann eine diachrone Konzeption intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit eher begegnen. (shrink)