Compensation for Damaged Heritage

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 9 considers how we ought to respond, post bellum, to damaged heritage—that is, what ought to be done with such heritage. We approach this question from the perspective of compensatory duties. When heritage is damaged in war, the primary victims of that damage—that is, those whose flourishing is significantly set back by the damage—are wronged and are owed compensation for that wrong. This raises a more familiar version of the ‘stones versus lives’ challenge: given that compensation demands scarce resources, is it ever permitted to use those resources to compensate for the loss of heritage rather than to meet people’s more basic interests? This chapter argues that since wrongdoers’ duties to compensate their victims ordinarily take precedence over their duties of assistance, wrongdoers can be under an obligation to compensate for damaging heritage even if those resources would do more good if they were directed towards poverty alleviation. However, innocent third parties do not incur duties to compensate for the damaging of heritage in war. Indeed, third-party states are under duties not to compensate for the loss of heritage, since such use of their citizens’ resources would not discharge their citizens’ duties to aid. It is, nonetheless, permissible for non-state third parties to provide compensatory resources for the loss of heritage. On the non-consequentialist view that we endorse, individuals who have discharged their duties to aid may use their remaining resources to pursue their own ends and projects, which can of course include heritage protection.