For whom to build after oneself?
On the axis: Temporal orientation · those who will come
To plant a tree whose shade you will never sit under: do we owe anything to those who will come, who have done nothing for us? Transmission turns the present toward a future that outlasts us.
Justification
Traditional ethics, observes, was an ethics of the neighbour and the present: its imperatives held between contemporaries, for acts with near effects. Modern technology changes the nature of action: its effects are cumulative, irreversible and planetary. Hence a new imperative, reformulating 's, which requires our acts to remain compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on Earth. Future generations cannot today assert their interests or enter into a relation of reciprocity; responsibility therefore rests on the vulnerability of what depends on us, on the model of parents toward a newborn. The pole takes up his formula almost word for word.
Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on Earth.The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I-II · The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. IV (the newborn as archetype of responsibility)
Anchors: Arendt · Jonas · Burke
leads to: Future generations (A right with no bearer?) · Death (Living on in one's works)