Rawls and Justice between Generations

Abstract

The idea of society as a fair system of cooperation is of fundamental importance for Rawls. It connects with the idea of reciprocity, in that the participants are to contribute their fair share and benefit appropriately in return. Rawls believed that fair cooperation of this kind could take place between the members of different generations and consequently argued that the parties in the original position would also select a principle of just savings. Extending the idea of fair cooperation to cover the relations between generations, however, raises difficult questions. Not only can there be no direct reciprocity between non-contemporaries, but the presently existing can also determine the identities of future people. This puts the idea of extending the idea of fair cooperation to cover the relations between non-contemporaries into question and causes serious difficulties for how to represent future people in the original position. This chapter discusses these challenges and different attempts to handle them. It also argues that Rawlsians should be committed to treating future people as directly relevant not only for issues of intergenerational justice but also for the closely related matter of political legitimacy.