Lecture Three

Abstract

Abstract This lecture—delivered in an ending world where humanity faces unavoidable extinction in two hundred years—explores Rivka Weinberg’s contractualist procreative ethical principles, and applies them to a slowly ending world. Weinberg’s approach is outlined in detail, and compared to John Rawls’s original contractualism and to the approaches of Elizabeth Harman and Melinda Roberts addressed in Lecture Two. To apply Weinberg’s procreative principles in a slowly ending world, the lecture first asks what Weinberg would say about voluntary imminent extinction, and whether multigenerationalist motivations could supplement Weinberg’s original focus on parent–child relationships. It then considers two related objections to Weinberg’s view: that it either forbids procreation altogether or collapses into incoherence. The latter objection leads to questions about the relationship between Weinberg’s contractualism and the multigenerationalist approach defended elsewhere in this book, and about Weinberg’s underlying Rawlsian contractualist framework. Finally, the lecture asks whether Weinberg can meet challenges from anti-natalists and multigenerationalists. A theme of this lecture is that permissible procreation in an ending world requires active cooperation with future people—and not merely passive promotion of their well-being.