Abstract

In the debate regarding intergenerational obligations, growing attention has been given to the strategy of switching the focus from a justice-based treatment of the problem to a solution that contemplates the incorporation of future subjects’ interests within the democratic demos. In view of achieving such an endeavour, deliberative approaches have mainly tended to underscore the fruitfulness of the all-affected interest principle. Opposing this view by outlining the key predicaments such an approach inevitably encounters, I attempt, in what follows, to show why the dynamic of representation may still do a better job, provided one stresses its “responsiveµ character, by dint of which political presentism and paternalism can be mitigated.