Heikkinen, Karri;
(2024)
Why intergenerational sufficientarianism is not enough.
Politics, Philosophy & Economics
10.1177/1470594x241259185.
(In press).
Preview |
PDF
heikkinen-2024-why-intergenerational-sufficientarianism-is-not-enough.pdf - Published Version Download (305kB) | Preview |
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 |
Archive Staff Only
View Item |