The problem of the future in postwar Anglo-American political philosophy

Abstract

Among the conceptual problems raised by climate change is that of how to think about the future. Theories of intergenerational justice and other accounts of obligations to the future in Anglo-American philosophy tend to argue that the remote future matters morally. Where did these arguments come from? This essay explores the roots of contemporary ideas about the remote future in debates that took place among Anglophone philosophers in the 1970s.