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2 - Climate Ethics and Intergenerational Reciprocity in Indigenous Philosophies

from Part I - Indigenous Philosophies on Justice between Generations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

By
Matthias Fritsch
Edited by
Hiroshi Abe ,
Matthias Fritsch  and
Mario Wenning
Hiroshi Abe
Affiliation:
Kyoto University
Matthias Fritsch
Affiliation:
Concordia University, Montréal
Mario Wenning
Affiliation:
Loyola University, Spain
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Summary

The chapter proposes a concept of justice for future people that is mindful of Indigenous critiques of the Anthropocene and associated climate horror scenarios. I first review these critiques, which suggest that motivating pro-futural care by dreading an impending climate crisis tends to betray a privileged, often settler-colonial perspective. On this basis, I then review various Indigenous accounts of intergenerational relations, in which I find one common idea in the claim that present generations owe to descendants in part because they received a gift from ancestors. I seek to model and defend this view and its social ontology (I call it “asymmetrical reciprocity”). I then seek to show how asymmetrical reciprocity can help to decolonize the future by disallowing a linear view of time according to which a focus on the future permits the neglect of the past. Hence, climate ethics and intergenerational justice must face the history of colonialism.

Keywords

climate ethicsIndigenous thoughtintergenerational justicereciprocitythe giftKyle WhyteMarcel Mauss
Type
Chapter
Information
Intercultural Philosophy and Environmental Justice between Generations
Indigenous, African, Asian, and Western Perspectives
 , pp. 33 - 58
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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