In this paper, I analyse whether empathy with future generations is feasible and whether it is a potentially useful instrument in effectively providing resources for future generations. I argue that empathy with future generations is possible, that it likely leads to a form of minimal concern, and that it can help in solving the relevant motivational problem. The most significant hurdle is not so much to do with achieving the required normative recognition of future generations, but with epistemic problems regarding (...) the right actions in protecting future interests and needs. Empathy can again be of help in this regard, but it would need to be successfully trained and supported. We need to stretch our empathy to non-existing people and we need to constrain our imagination in adequate ways to achieve a sufficient understanding of the perspectives of future people. (shrink)

Corporeality of human beings should be taken seriously and be included in their self-understanding as the ‘nature we are ourselves’. Such an ecophenomenological account has important normative implications. Firstly, I argue that the instrumental value of nature can be particularly well justified based on an ecophenomenological approach. Secondly, sentience is inseparable from corporeality. Therefore, insofar as it is a concern of the ecophenomenological approach to take corporeality and its implications seriously, sentient beings deserve direct moral consideration. Thirdly, it can strengthen (...) the so-far underestimated category of eudaimonic values of nature, which can be best developed through an ecophenomenological reconstruction. Taken together, ecophenomenology is vital for environmental ethics and helps us to leave behind its widespread ‘centrism’. Ecophenomenology should therefore, both methodically and philosophically, be included in the discussion of environmental ethical problems. (shrink)

Proposals for how to redesign democracy so as to better secure the demands of intergenerational justice can be divided into three broad families: (1) representative proxies; (2) differential voting schemes; and (3) counter-majoritarian devices. However, these proposals suffer from a fundamental weakness: namely, they all assume that despite the fact that democracy is by its very nature ill-equipped to secure intergenerational justice, it is nevertheless possible to rely on democracy to solve this problem in the first place. But that, to (...) put it colloquially, is like thinking that one can pull oneself up by one’s own bootstraps. This paper sketches the shape and contours of a solution to this problem that is better able than the alternatives to escape this objection. This solution draws upon the strategy of a so-called ‘non-reformist reform.’. (shrink)