Responsibility for the Non-Existent Ones?
Abstract
The article is concerned with the possibility of formulating moral judgments with respect to actions whose results may influence the quality of life, existence, number and identity of the future people. Because of the problems connected with defining the addressees and the reasons of responsibility for future generations on the ground of the ethical theories existing now, new theories are formulated on the basis of the so-called impersonal or personal premises. According to the impersonal theories moral evaluations are based on the final assessment of all the effects of the action, whose total value may be defined as a positive or negative state of affairs. According to the representatives of personal theories, the question whether an action has a beneficial or a harmful effect on the addressee of the action, is the main criterion of the moral evaluation. Since there is no satisfactory justification for the responsibility for the future generations, both in personal and impersonal theories argumentation is analyzed that is based on a predicted responsibility for the people who will exist in the future.
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