A right with no bearer?
On the axis: Future generations · a being yet to be born
A right seems to require a bearer who exists; future beings do not yet exist, claim nothing, can do nothing for us. Can there be an obligation with no reciprocity and no one to hold it, or does our duty toward them rest on something other than a right?
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: Rawls · Jonas
leads to: The origin of the social bond