Irene Gómez-Franco

Imagination is the ability to put oneself in someone else's shoes and consider alternative views. In this article, I explore how imagination can be understood as an expanded faculty, extending not only through space, but also through time — as a kind of 'visit to the other' in the future. To this end, I first explore various exercises of the imagination, such as sympathy as formulated by Adam Smith, commitment as defined by Amartya Sen and Hannah Arendt's political interpretation of Kantian philosophy's concept of the faculty of judgement. This concept of imagination offers a promising approach to establishing a sense of responsibility rooted in the public sphere and deliberation, with the aim of building a shared world that considers the needs of future generations. However, imagination alone is not enough; both the education of individuals and the establishment of political and economic structures that encourage active, critical and responsible citizenship are fundamental.

The focus of this work is to explore the idea of limits within certain scopes where they arguably matter most: those of intergenerational justice and a prospective ethics of the future. When limits are conceived in a nuanced and emancipatory way – as the autonomy and capability to place limits in the current context of environmental crisis, while taking into account our finite nature – the possibility arises to build a concept of responsibility that cares for the well-being of present and future generations.

The primary concern of this work is to ask what we want to leave to future generations. The argumentation is grounded in two premises: firstly, that there is an intrinsic interdependence between justice and sustainable development; and secondly, that the capabilities approach proposed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has made the crucial contribution of pointing out that for social justice, it is ‘ends’ that are fundamental and not just ‘means’. The idea behind this hypothesis is that people transform resources into valuable ways of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ differently, so the informational focus should be shifted onto ‘freedoms to’, or the real opportunities that people have. Thus, compared to theories that place the emphasis on income or needs in relation to development and sustainable justice, the capabilities approach presents a more promising framework for correcting intergenerational injustices. However, this theory must also deal with problems unique to prospective justice, in addition to the limitations of its own incompleteness. In this sense, it could be very helpful to complement it with an idea of intergenerational responsibility and a specification of the content of capabilities, for its implementation in the intergenerational context.

In the face of the climate crisis, economic and political instability, ethical theories must address the pressing issues of intergenerational justice, particularly the question of our obligations to future generations. Unlike prevailing theories, this inspiring work explores four problematic areas of intergenerational justice: epistemic uncertainty; the rights of the unborn; justice between not overlapping generations; and the reasons why we should care about the quality of life of future generations. The book departs from one of the most successful perspectives on social justice: the capabilities approach. Starting from the idea of what people can actually 'do' and 'be', and from real opportunities, this book shines in its original commitment to a new category of responsibility that addresses the fragility created by human beings which is unprecedented until now. Using clear language and specific examples to illustrate the way forward, Irene Gómez-Franco skilfully combines issues ranging from ethics to politics, economics, and environmental studies. She delves into topics such as women's rights, democracy and public reason, community interests, ecocide, and the sustainability of capabilities. The result is a work of refined practical sensitivity that is essential reading for anyone interested in building the conditions for a fair future with dignity for human life. ________________ En el momento actual de crisis climática, de inestabilidad de los sistemas económicos y políticos, las teorías éticas deben responder a dilemas urgentes de justicia intergeneracional, en especial, a la pregunta de qué le debemos a las generaciones futuras. Esta inspiradora obra, a diferencia de las teorías predominantes, se adentra en cuatro regiones problemáticas de la justicia intergeneracional –la incertidumbre epistémica, los derechos de los no nacidos, la justicia entre generaciones que no conviven y las razones por las cuales nos deberíamos preocupar por la calidad de vida de las personas del futuro– desde una de las perspectivas más exitosas de la justicia social, la teoría arraigada en las «capacidades». Es así como, partiendo de lo que las personas efectivamente pueden «hacer» y «ser», de las oportunidades reales, este libro brilla de manera original en su apuesta por una nueva categoría de responsabilidad que se comprometa con la fragilidad que el ser humano ha creado, la cual no tiene precedentes hasta ahora. Con un lenguaje claro, salpicado de casos concretos que ilustran el camino, Irene Gómez Franco afronta con maestría esta tarea al conjugar cuestiones que van de la ética, a la política, la economía y los estudios medioambientales, ahondando en temas como los derechos de las mujeres, la democracia y la razón pública, los intereses de la comunidad, el ecocidio y la sostenibilidad de las libertades. El resultado es una obra de afinada sensibilidad práctica, imprescindible para todo aquel interesado en la construcción de un futuro donde la vida humana sea más justa y digna.