Cose dell'"altro mondo" : l'atopia della giustizia intergenerazionale quale sfida all'etica, alla politica e al diritto

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the urgency, as well as difficulty, relating to the foundation of intergenerational justice. With regard to the mainstream theories on the matter - mainly represented by the contractualist, utilitarian and natural law stances -, this contribution seeks to show, both in the field of ethics and of politics as well as law, their preponderant adherence to the primacy of the present and the contemporary and, as a result, their inability to acknowledge and uphold forms of obligation that are genuinely future-oriented. According to this contribution, such an upholding is to be elicited from perspectives that are explicitly centered on the features of futurity and transcendence, which are part and parcel of a demand for responsibility actually arising from somewhere like "another world".

In depicting the main traits of such - mostly phenomenological - "other-wordly" perspectives, this article also emphasizes the therewith related ethical-anthropological revolution at stake. [Publishers' text].