Open Book Publishers

14. Limitarianism and Future Generations

Tim Meijers(author)

Chapter of: Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism(pp. 361–390)

Export Metadata

Raw

Metadata
Title	14. Limitarianism and Future Generations
Contributor	Tim Meijers(author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0338.14
Landing page	https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0338/chapters/10.11647/obp.0338.14
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Copyright	Tim Meijers
Publisher	Open Book Publishers
Published on	2023-07-06
Long abstract	This chapter asks what role limitarianism can play in theorizing justice between generations. Do intergenerational challenges give us additional reasons to embrace limitarianism? Taking economic limitarianism as a starting point, I argue that both the democratic argument and the argument from basic needs have considerable intergenerational traction, but the latter raises difficult questions for limitarians. I also argue that economic limitarianism cannot offer a full account of intergenerational justice, due to its focus on individual and monetary holdings. We could design a more comprehensive limitarianism in response to these worries, but only at the cost of the appeal and distinctiveness of limitarianism. The last section somewhat speculatively develops a Rawls-inspired account of intergenerational limitarianism which stays true to the focus on monetary wealth, but with clear environmental implications.
Page range	pp. 361–390
Print length	30 pages
Language	English (Original)

Locations
	Landing Page	Full text URL	Platform
PDF	https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0338/chapters/10.11647/obp.0338.14	Landing page	https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0338.14.pdf	Full text URL	Publisher Website
HTML	https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0338/chapters/10.11647/obp.0338.14	Landing page	https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0338/ch14.xhtml	Full text URL	Publisher Website

Contributors

Tim Meijers

(author)

Assistant Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Leiden University

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0457-2044

Tim Meijers is Assistant Professor of moral and political philosophy at Leiden University. He is primarily interested in questions of intergenerational justice. He also thinks about issues in global justice, reproductive ethics and population ethics and has an interest in foundational questions in political philosophy. He is the recipient of an early career grant (VENI) from the Dutch Science Foundation. His research has appeared in journals such as Politics, Philosophy and Economics; Economics & Philosophy; CRISPP; Canadian Journal of Philosophy; Philosophy Compass; and Ethics & International Affairs.

References

Attas, Daniel. 2009. A Transgenerational Difference Principle. In: Gosseries, A. and L. Meyer (Eds). Intergenerational Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 189–218.
Barone, G., and Mocetti, S. 2021. Intergenerational mobility in the very long run: Florence 1427–2011, The Review of Economic Studies, 88(4), 1863–1891. https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdaa075
Casal, Paula. draft. Conservative and Conservationist Sufficiency. On file with author.
Christiano, Thomas. 2012. Money in Politics. In: David Estlund (Ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195376692.013.0013
Clark, Gregory and Cummins, Neil. 2015. Intergenerational wealth mobility in England, 1858–2012: Surnames and social mobility. The Economic Journal, 125(582), 61–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12165
Gaspart, Frédéric., and Gosseries, Axel. 2007. Are generational savings unjust? Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 6(2), 193–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X07073006
Green, F. 2021. Ecological limits: Science, justice, policy, and the good life. Philosophy Compass, 16(6), , e12740, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12740
Harel Ben-Shahar, Tammy. 2019. Limitarianism and relative thresholds. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3404687
Herzog, Lisa. Forthcoming. Liberal Egalitarianism beyond Methodological Atomism. In: Ingrid Robeyns (Ed.). Pluralizing Political Philosophy: Economic and Ecological Inequalities in Global Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
Heyward, Clare. 2008. Can the all-affected principle include future persons? Green deliberative democracy and the non-identity problem. Environmental Politics, 17(4), 625–643. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010802193591
Hickey, Colin. 2021. Climate change, distributive justice, and “pre‐institutional” limits on resource appropriation. European Journal of Philosophy, 29(1), 215–235. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12569
Huseby, Robert. 2022. The limits of limitarianism. Journal of Political Philosophy, 3, 230– 248. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12274
Icardi, Elena. 2022. Perché limitare l’eccessiva ricchezza individuale? Ragioni e problemi del limitarianesimo. Biblioteca della libertà, LVII, 1–27. https://doi.org/10.23827/BDL_2022_1
Icardi, Elena. 2023. A Neo-Republican Argument for Limitarianism. In: Ingrid Robeyns (Ed.). Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers (pp. 247–270).
Koch, Max and Buch-Hansen. 2020. The IPE of degrowth and sustainable welfare. In: Vivares, E. (Ed.). The Routledge Handbook to Global Political Economy. Routledge: London, pp. 375–390.
Kramm, Matthias and Robeyns, Ingrid. 2020. Limits to wealth in the history of Western philosophy. European Journal of Philosophy, 28(4), 954–969. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12535
Lippert-Rasmussen, Kasper. 2012. ‘Equality of What?’ and Intergenerational Justice. Ethical Perspectives, 19(3), 501. https://doi.org/10.2143/EP.19.3.2172301
Meijers, Tim. 2017. Citizens in appropriate numbers: evaluating five claims about justice and population size. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 47(2–3), 246–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2017.1285166
Meijers, Tim. 2018. Justice Between Generations. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.233
Neuhäuser, Christian. 2018. Reichtum als moralisches Problem. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Nielsen, Lasse, and Axelsen, David. 2022. Envy, Levelling-Down, and Harrison Bergeron Defending Limitarianism from Three Common Objections. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 25, 737–753. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10319-3
Oxfam. 2020. Confronting Carbon Inequality. https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/confronting-carbon-inequality
Rawls, John. 2001. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John and Van Parijs, Philippe. 2003. Three Letters on The Law of Peoples and the European Union. Revue de philosophie économique, 7, 7–20.
Reich, Rob. 2018. Just Giving. Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Robeyns, Ingrid. 2017. Having too much. In: Jack Knight & Melissa Schwartzberg (Eds). Wealth - Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. New York: New York University Press, pp. 1–44.
Robeyns, Ingrid. 2019. What, If Anything, Is Wrong with Extreme Wealth? Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 20, 251–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2019.1633734
Robeyns, Ingrid. 2022. Why Limitarianism? Journal of Political Philosophy, 30(2), 249–270. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12275
Scheffler, Samuel. 2013. Death and the Afterlife. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shue, Henry. 2015. Historical Responsibility, Harm Prohibition, and Preservation Requirement: Core Practical Convergence on Climate Change. Moral Philosophy and Politics (2) 1, 7–31. https://doi.org/10.1515/mopp-2013-0009
Shue, Henry. 1993. Subsistence Emissions and Luxury Emissions. Law and Policy, 15, 39– 59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9930.1993.tb00093.x
Timmer, Dick. 2019. Defending the Democratic Argument to Limitarianism: A Reply to Volacu and Dumitru, Philosophia, 47, 1331–1339. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-018-0030-6
Timmer, Dick. 2021a. Limitarianism: pattern, principle, or presumption? Journal of Applied Philosophy, 38, 760–773. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12502
Timmer, Dick. 2021b. Thresholds in distributive justice. Utilitas, 33, 422–441. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820821000194
Timmer, Dick. 2023. Presumptive Limitarianism: A Reply to Robert Huseby. In: Ingrid Robeyns (Ed.). Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers (pp. 129–150).
Valente, Manuel. 2022. Proportionality without Inequality: Defending Lifetime Political Equality through Storable Votes. Res Publica 28, 715–732. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-022-09547-2
Van Bavel, Bas, Curtis, Daniel, and Soens, Tim. 2018. Economic inequality and institutional adaptation in response to flood hazards. Ecology and Society, 23(4), 30–47. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss4/art30/
Zwarthoed, Danielle. 2019. Autonomy-based reasons for limitarianism. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 21, 1181–1204. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-018-9958-7

Export Metadata

This chapter asks what role limitarianism can play in theorizing justice between generations. Do intergenerational challenges give us additional reasons to embrace limitarianism? Taking economic limitarianism as a starting point, I argue that both the democratic argument and the argument from basic needs have considerable intergenerational traction, but the latter raises difficult questions for limitarians. I also argue that economic limitarianism cannot offer a full account of intergenerational justice, due to its focus on individual and monetary holdings. We could design a more comprehensive limitarianism in response to these worries, but only at the cost of the appeal and distinctiveness of limitarianism. The last section somewhat speculatively develops a Rawls-inspired account of intergenerational limitarianism which stays true to the focus on monetary wealth, but with clear environmental implications.