Intergenerationelle Gerechtigkeit

Can we do justice to human beings who do not yet exist? The study examines substantiations and consequences of justice towards future people. After a detailed analysis of egalitarian, consequentialist and reciprocity-based theories of intergenerational justice, the author sketches an alternative model of intergenerational justice that is based on normative individualism. Thus, intergenerational justice takes both its starting point and its ultimate point of justification at the individual being, not at a generation as a collective entity. Intergenerational justice thereby proofs not to be a uniform principle but is differentiated into plural relations. Showing the ramifications of intergenerational justice in a particular real-life case, the theory is then applied to evaluate the German constitutional law on state debt. In this context, intergenerational justice yields the general illegitimacy of consumptively used long-term public debt.