Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T12:46:47.237Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Human Extinction and Our Obligations to the Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2019

Patrick Kaczmarek Open the ORCID record for Patrick Kaczmarek [Opens in a new window]  and
Simon Beard
Patrick Kaczmarek*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge
Simon Beard
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

On certain plausible views, if humanity were to unanimously decide to cause its own extinction, this would not be wrong, since there is no one whom this act would wrong. We argue this is incorrect. Causing human extinction would still wrong someone; namely, our forebears who sacrificed life, limb and livelihood for the good of posterity, and whose sacrifices would be made less morally worthwhile by this heinous act.

Type
Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 199 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beard, Simon and Kaczmarek, Patrick. Forthcoming. ‘The Wrongness of Human Extinction’, Argumenta.Google Scholar
Finneron-Burns, Elizabeth. 2017. ‘What's Wrong with Human Extinction?’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47: 327–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frick, Johann. 2017. ‘On the Survival of Humanity’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47: 344–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaczmarek, Patrick. 2017. ‘How Much is Rule-Consequentialism Really Willing to Give Up to Save the Future of Humanity?’, Utilitas, 29: 239–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lomasky, Loren E. 1987. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
McMahan, Jeff. 1981. ‘Problems of Population Theory’, Ethics, 92: 96–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMahan, Jeff. 2013. ‘Causing People to Exist and Saving People's Lives’, The Journal of Ethics, 17: 5–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 2003. ‘Justifiability to Each Person’, Ratio, 16: 368–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 2017a. ‘Future People, the Non-Identity Problem, and Person-Affecting Principles’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 45: 118–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, Derek. 2017b. On What Matters, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. 1998. What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
Wellman, Carl. 1995. Real Rights (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar