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Why intergenerational sufficientarianism is not enough

Heikkinen, Karri; (2024) Why intergenerational sufficientarianism is not enough. Politics, Philosophy & Economics 10.1177/1470594x241259185. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Many political philosophers accept a view called intergenerational sufficientarianism, according to which we should aim to make sure that future people have enough of whatever is the appropriate currency of distributive justice, such as welfare, capabilities, or need-satisfaction. According to proponents of this view, we have good reasons to accept intergenerational sufficientarianism, even if sufficientarianism is not the right way to think about distributive justice among contemporaries. However, despite its popularity, and the established literature on sufficientarianism in the contemporary context, precise statements of intergenerational sufficientarianism remain relatively rare. In this paper, I first survey the reasons that have been offered for accepting intergenerational sufficientarianism, and then formulate multiple precise interpretations of the view. I argue that there is in fact no precise formulation of intergenerational sufficientarianism that achieves all the benefits attributed to the view in the literature, and all plausible interpretations of the view also face serious further problems. Thus, intergenerational sufficientarianism is not as attractive a view as many have thought.

Type: Article
Title: Why intergenerational sufficientarianism is not enough
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1177/1470594x241259185
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470594x241259185
Language: English
Additional information: © The Author(s) 2024. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10196104
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