History is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
I argue that there are duties that can be called ‘Moral duties due to history’ or, in short, ‘Duties to History’ (DTH). My claim is not the familiar thought that we need to learn from history on how to live better in the present and going forward, but that history itself creates moral duties. In addition to those obligations we currently recognise in response to the present and the future, there also exist special obligations in response to the past. If convincing, this means that our lives ought to be guided, in part, not only by our obligations to the living but by our DTH. This is a surprising result, with significant and sometimes perplexing implications. My focus is on the obligations of individuals in the light of history rather than on collective duties.
I argue that there are duties that can be called ‘Moral duties due to history’ or, in short, ‘Duties to History’ (DTH). My claim is not the familiar thought that we need to learn from history on how to live better in the present and going forward, but that history itself creates moral duties. In addition to those obligations we currently recognise in response to the present and the future, there also exist special obligations in response to the past; such as obligations to good people in the past, but going beyond them. If convincing, this means that our lives ought to be guided, in part, not only by our obligations to the living but by our DTH.Footnote 1 This is a surprising result, with significant and sometimes perplexing implications. My focus is on the obligations of individuals in the light of history rather than on collective duties.
1. History as a basis for moral considerations
1.1 Addressing effort, risk and sacrifice
The first set of moral considerations that follow from history concerns our acknowledgment and recognition of benevolent deeds such as great effort, risk and sacrifice. Many people in the past have made great efforts, taken great risks and/or sacrificed themselves or their interests for others, in a way that impacts us today. Consider for example the struggles against the Nazis and their allies in World War II. There were of course many types of motivation involved. But to the extent that, for many of those fighting, the concern for future human beings mattered, this can be a pertinent moral consideration. By thinking of the future of humanity, others (in a sense) thought of us, and this affected their motivation for making the efforts, risks and sacrifices thanks to which we were later born and many of us live in a world of freedom and opportunity. The claim is that we have some duties to past people: as beneficiaries of their well-meaning efforts, risks and sacrifices; out of respect for them and what they did (for us, for our society and culture, and more broadly for humanity); and because, given what they aimed for and did, it would be virtuous for us to react and act in certain ways.
My main claim is based upon the numerous things past people did, often intentionally, that we benefit from given that we exist – such as the knowledge, values, institutions, art and traditions that they have left to us. And they often aimed and hoped for future people to enjoy these goods – whoever these future people might turn out to be. The DTH can be based in these straightforward benefits, even without adding that we should be grateful to them that we exist. A side claim is that this is further strengthened if having been born itself can be seen as a benefit; I will consider this below.
1.2 Harming and benefitting the dead
A second family of moral and more broadly value-based concerns is about harming and benefitting the dead. There has been considerable philosophical debate over the possibility of doing so (e.g. Nagel, Reference Nagel1979; Partridge, Reference Partridge1981; Feinberg, Reference Feinberg1984; Pitcher, Reference Pitcher1984; Callahan, Reference Callahan1987; Ridge, Reference Ridge2003). Assuming that we can do so is not a condition for most of my claims about the DTH but, as we shall see, it plays a role. Even on the assumption that the dead cannot now be experientially affected (i.e. that there is no life after death), it is plausible to think that their interests remain. Most people care about what happens to their children, to their life projects, and to their reputations, for example, and their interests in these matters persist after death. With their children well and happy, their life projects flourishing, and their reputations positive and intact, their interests (understood, for example, in terms of desire or preference satisfaction) are safeguarded even after they are no longer there to know about this. Awareness of being benefited or harmed is, of course, not a condition for benefit or harm, since living people can be benefited or harmed behind their backs.
This means that it is, to a significant extent, up to us whether and how the interests of dead people are met and, in a sense, how well their lives pan out in retrospect. Their existence, in this sense, continues and its form depends on us. Their lives are, as it were, in our hands, just as our lives will be in the hands of future people. Their interests in part concern present, living people, but could often be broader, i.e. involve certain ideals and values. How well we respect, preserve, and enhance these matters affects how well the interests of the dead are realized. There is a very real sense of meaning in the ‘meaning of life’ that has to do with what a person's life, as a whole, is taken to mean, in terms of its legacy, and that often does seem to depend on what happens after the person dies.
1.3 Redeeming history
A third, broader set of moral and value-based concerns pertains to certain parts of humanity, or indeed to humanity itself; beyond the concern with past persons. The idea here is that history has been in many ways unspeakably awful. What we do may help compensate for and even redeem it. This may be done through achieving a better and meaningful past-related present and future, by way of helping the past make more sense, and in other ways that we will explore. Here the evils of history play a particularly large role in establishing the DTH.
1.4 Meaning for our own lives
Finally, a fourth concern is that our own lives can gain value-based meaning through the decisions we make and the roles we play, in relation to the past. To the extent that, for example, we may make some past sacrifices more worthwhile, or continue to follow a certain historical sequence, our lives can gain meaning and value through history. We can become better people. We author our lives and interpret them through interaction with the past and, in a sense, make past people our partners to imbuing our lives with meaning, just as future people matter to our living meaningful lives (see, e.g., Scheffler, Reference Scheffler2018).
This may seem to be merely a prudential matter, not an ethical one. But I think that the two are to some extent fused together here. Just as we hope and arguably can sometimes expect that future people find meaning in matters related to us, so arguably it is reasonable to think that there are expectations from us that are similar, in our attitudes and practices towards our predecessors, and other past-related matters. My point is not merely that the relation to the past can give us a sense of meaning in our lives, but that there is meaning here, that needs to be acknowledged and reacted to. We gain meaning, and contribute, by reacting in an appropriate way (see Smilansky, Reference Smilansky2003). A person who stands at an important crossroad but fails to see its meaning may be faulted, even morally, and likewise the failure to concern ourselves with past-related meaning, can sometimes be similarly faulted.
2. Some duties to history
2.1 Remembrance
We flourish and exist, at least in part, due to the efforts and sacrifices of others. They are the ones to whom we might primarily have a duty to remember. Being remembered and acknowledged, continuing to exist, in some sense, in the thoughts and feelings of others, are as a rule good. Forgetfulness, neglect or abandonment are harmful. The desire to be remembered is nearly universal: few, for example, would not be deeply saddened if they thought that their children and grandchildren would hardly ever remember them even for a short while after they died. That some people might not share this desire to be remembered does not matter to my claims here. We can, in these ways, do the deceased good or ill.
We also exist as a result of many other factors, for the contingency of our coming to be means that things needed to be just as they were, with very little wiggle room. As for those whom our coming into the world depended on but who made no efforts or sacrifices in any sense on our behalf, there is very little or no need to remember them positively. We can be happy that they existed, but need not be grateful to them (see Smilansky, Reference Smilansky2007a, p. 60). Disregarding them does not discredit us. Of course people are complex and their efforts and desires do not often lend themselves to easy classification, but we are presenting here the basic ideas even at the price of some simplification. Focussing on the good people, we do seem to have some prima facie duties of memory to them.Footnote 2 Their nature and weight will be taken up later.
2.2 Appreciation and gratitude
We flourish and exist as a result of the efforts and sacrifices of others, for which pro tanto we ought to be grateful. Again, we also do so as a result of efforts of people to whom we owe no duties of gratitude (perhaps they even tried to kill our ancestors, or to enslave humanity).Footnote 3 But, oddly, we ought to be thankful that they existed, i.e. happy about that state of affairs at least insofar as this was a condition for our flourishing and coming to be. Yet as with remembrance, the duties of appreciation and gratitude exist particularly towards the well-meaning and the good; and of those there were, of course, plenty.Footnote 4
2.3 Being moral
Ought we to be good, to try to do the right things and avoid doing wrong, because of the DTH? It seems to me that a varied case can be made for such a claim. Let us examine the fourfold considerations we saw in Section 1.
The efforts, risks and sacrifices of past people who came before us have ethical import: we live good, rich, social and cultural lives, and indeed exist, as a result (albeit also due to other factors). By trying to be and to do good, we manifest our appreciation and gratitude, and continue this chain of ethical goodness. If we do not, we can be said to weaken or sever it. It might be said that there are obligations to view ourselves as party to this grand ethical project, which began before we were born and which we shall pass on to future generations. This has deontological and contractual aspects, as well as virtue ethical ones. And such an awareness has clear consequentialist benefits.
It might be queried how we express gratitude by being good ourselves. If someone helps me when I am in need, is helping another person in a similar context in the future a way of showing gratitude to the first? I think that this thought can be sustained. The gratitude for those who have benefited me lives on, first, through my thereby being in a position to help others and, second, as an inspiration for my own acts, for which my beneficiaries ought to be grateful. Those who have planted trees for our benefit enable us to enjoy the shade and the fruits, and we pass on this appreciation by planting trees for our successors in turn. The notion of the possibility of harming or benefitting the dead likewise finds ready application here. Our behaviour affects the outcome of what bad and good people have done. The projects of those who fought nobly for freedom, justice, knowledge and human flourishing are sustained and promoted by our similar efforts, while by being morally deficient we let them down and, often, further the interests of previous bad past people. We affect their lives.
Moreover, while redeeming humanity is a lofty ideal, and may be thought to be pretentious, it is based upon the accumulation of small actions made by ordinary people. When we play our part, we share in this effort and, not only do we make a practical contribution, we also manifest a moral attitude. By transcending our personal concerns, or the broader but still local concerns (of our community, nation, religious group or the like), we join the effort to try to make up for the evils of history.
What is involved in the idea of redemption here? And can we, in fact, redeem the evils of the past? In part, the past cannot be redeemed, perhaps for the same reason that we cannot really forgive for dead, wronged people. It is for them to forgive, and because they were wrongly murdered, they cannot do so and will never be able to. Likewise, the evils of the past remain, and whatever happens now cannot fully redeem the past wrongs and the suffering, humiliation and death of the victims.
Nevertheless, some things can be done. The process here is complex. We already saw the pro tanto duties to past good people, and these can, to some extent, be interpreted as duties to redeem history. But beyond the duties to individuals there is, I am suggesting, some reason to think of a general duty to improve the world. This exists beyond our duty to previous good people. If everybody in the past were bad, we would have this duty while clearly disregarding any ‘legacy’ that those people would supposedly like us to continue and uphold. The role that most people can play is small, and that, surprisingly, is typically a good thing (Smilansky, Reference Smilansky2012). Those weary of a general ‘duty to improve the world’ should recall that we are speaking here mostly about the mundane ways of being good and creating value, for the DTH that I am pointing to mostly track these familiar non-DTH moral paths.
In one way, by doing good and causing good we increase the general amount of good in history; we, as it were, dilute the badness and ugliness of the overall human condition. We thereby compensate for the bad and change the balance in favour of the good. That already makes the state of affairs that is human history somewhat less dark.
But beyond that, by merely enlisting in this morally-guided concern, we add goodness to the world. Even where we do not succeed in affecting external reality, we exhibit a positive moral attitude and a value-based spirit which in itself goes some way towards redeeming history. Here we can recall Kant's words about the good will, which shines even if it turns out to be impotent in practice. We make humanity better, in our own selves.Footnote 5
Third, we may affect the story of the relevant part of history. Human life gains much of its meaning through the construction of narratives (e.g. Velleman, Reference David Velleman, Christman and Anderson2005). When past suffering dominates and remains fairly senseless, the narrative is dark. If we can come through, in our part of the tale, and do better, then we are not only adding goodness (to the balance of good and evil in history, and through our good will and efforts themselves). By adding good we can also help to make some sense of that suffering, and the story can hopefully become one of progress. Moreover, the grim parts of the past could even serve as launching pads for the improvements, which emerge through us. Past misfortunes can, thus, sometimes become fortunate, making the story perhaps even one of fortunate misfortune, rather than the all too common one of unmitigated misfortune (cf. Smilansky, Reference Smilansky2007b, Ch.1; but see Sainsbury, Reference Sainsbury2009, section 2.2). So because we have come later we bear some responsibility, and the past gains meaning through us.Footnote 6
Finally, when we find meaning by contributing to life in such ethical directions, we get to permeate our lives with deep meaning. While we might sacrifice other types of meaning (related to different interests and drives on which we would otherwise spend time and money), an ethicized project provides a unique act of humaneness which transcends personal interests and is infused with deep meaning via its connection with past people and past efforts of humanity. The concern with having a meaningful life is infused with concern that transcends us, and we find meaning in and imbue meaning into the past and to past people.
The obligation to try and be moral (like the two further obligations to be explicated shortly) mostly has no distinct content, i.e. to be moral in these particular ways and not in others. Most of the strength of any DTH will simply be to be moral as such, whatever it may be that morality calls for.Footnote 7 So the DTH will function as a meta-normative further claim to be moral in the ‘normal’ ways.
2.4 Being happy
Like being ethical, being happy can be seen to matter morally, once we take the perspective suggested by our discussion. I hasten to note that happiness need not be our focus: other forms of well-being can be emphasized instead. I discuss here happiness, and in the next section the broader notion of leading a good life, and these together should capture most of what matters when focussing on the pertinent concerns. I think that there is something particularly surprising and interesting about the idea that we have a duty to try to be happy in our own lives, emerging from the DTH.
The significance of happiness in this context can be seen by a simple thought-experiment: if past people could see ahead in history, and get a glance into our own lives, what would they feel? If we are happy, and this is dependent on their (say) efforts and sacrifices, then we can see that many of them would be made happy by this thought. Imagine being able to jump to the future and see your great-grandchildren, and then perceive that they are very happy. This would surely be satisfying. Some past individuals (in a similar scenario, where they learn about us) might be envious of fortunate present people; and a historical perspective creates an awareness, rather unpleasantly, of how our existence typically depends on the ills befalling our ancestors (it is often true to say that we exist thanks to their misery). But nearly all good people would prima facie wish future people well.
We are focussing upon the positive attitudes here, and our present happiness will, in our thought experiment, surely make many of our ancestors happy. And the reverse should be the case if we, present people, are fairly miserable. It is not only that many past people would be saddened by this, but this may directly affect their thoughts about their own efforts and sacrifices. Quite simply, what have they made all these efforts and sacrifices for? Even without giving thoughts about ‘us’ too big a role in the motivations of past people (and in most contexts their primary concern was with their own and their loved ones’ lives), the dearth of present happiness, and therefore the limitations in the influence of their efforts and sacrifices, would surely be thought to be unfortunate.
Being dead and, we are assuming, not knowing about any of this, matters. Sometimes we would be glad of this, as, for example, we can be relieved that a grandmother has recently died and is thus not around to suffer from the suicide of her grandchild. But as we saw, there are a number of factors which make the happiness of present people a good and, even, a pro tanto duty as a result of the past. To the extent that past good people have made sacrifices for our sake, even in a weak sense, our being happy makes their lives better, it rewards them for the sacrifices; it satisfies the desires they had. It also benefits them, albeit in their dead state, by advancing their interests, and justifying as it were their investment in us.
Thirdly, our happiness compensates and redeems the world to some extent, by increasing the amount of happiness in it, which in part compensates for past misery and, in general, makes the human experience slightly happier (cf. Parfit, Reference Parfit2011, section 127). Present happiness can help make some sense of past misery, which may otherwise remain senseless.Footnote 8 The redemption by happiness also occurs through providing meaning, making the relevant part of reality more comprehensible; creating a positive narrative that involves progress. This narrative may well ask for further improvement, and may thus impel future generations to act worthily (more so than simply for our benefit). And finally, our own lives can connect to meaning and gain meaning here, through this process of compensating for and enhancing the past.Footnote 9
We can see this by thinking of one individual life, and even a specific period in a given life. Often the point of the suffering (repeated dental surgery, painful fertility treatments) is the reduction of misery and the prospect of future happiness. But a sad, traumatic or lonely childhood, which was not part of any intentional plan, can make more sense by becoming a part of a process of personal development leading to future happiness. It can be understood in this way by the growing child or, later in life, when he is a grown-up, in retrospect. And the difficult and senseless period can be given meaning by becoming part of the later achievement which enables happiness and the creation of value. All this makes perfect sense in an individual life, and this discussion proposes that we see a similar model as operating in an inter-generational, historical perspective.
2.5 Leading a good life
A similar process of argumentation can apply here, with the broader notion of leading a good life. Of course, there are different conceptions of what such a life could be. We cannot expect to determine the correct conception, or even the range of acceptable ones, here. But some things can be said. The general point is that leading a good life matters: it counts, outside of and in addition to the way it matters to ourselves, our close ones, and current living people to whom we have moral obligations. There is a further set of past-related considerations, and in this sense there can be said to be double-counting. If we lead a good life, that is good within our own lives and that of other living people, but it also interacts with the other sets of concerns that connect to the past, including the DTH.
The engagement with history, the way we can see it operating within us and, importantly, what we can learn from it, can be very helpful in helping us to lead a good life. The evils of history in particular are also lessons we can grow from, learning from the mistakes of our ancestors and hopefully avoiding similar mistakes. When Plato contemplated political theory and made recommendations, he lacked the knowledge and historical experience that we have gained in the period separating his times from ours (Smilansky, Reference Smilansky2010). Of course, the burdens of history can be heavy, and the shackles of the past can hold us back. Forgetting can be a release that enables a good life where too much ‘living in the past’ would be harmful. So balance and contextual thinking is needed here (cf. Margalit, Reference Margalit2002). In any case, our own attempt to lead good lives can not merely benefit from our knowledge of the past, but is directly related to the DTH.
As we have already noted, this process can occur in a number of ways (which may coincide). By leading a good life we can harm the dead that deserve to be harmed, who were eager that we not be here to lead a good life. One paradigmatic example is the Nazis. Jews, homosexuals and other victims of the Nazis provide ‘the best revenge’ simply by existing, procreating and flourishing. Likewise for another paradigmatic example, that of the descendents of slaves. Success in living and, in particular, living happily and well, is a great triumph over evil. At the same time, it also benefits those who fought against the evil and, more broadly, the victims and intended victims, whose interests are preserved. But beyond this ‘settling of accounts', when people lead good lives, and particularly in the face of great challenges, this in itself makes the world better, in ways that we have already seen.
Another way to realize this is to think about specific features of the past, and see the connection between them and my claims. For example, if past people had very little concern for us future people, then this would lessen those obligations that I claimed apply concerning memory and gratitude. Likewise, if history had been much merrier (yet assuming we still exist), then obligations related to thoughts of redeeming the past would be weakened. History has not only brought us into being, but what happened in it helps form the content of our DTH. To the extent that we believe that to have a good life requires understanding of one's life (as part of ‘knowing yourself'), this arguably requires knowledge and appreciation of ‘where you came from', ‘why you are as you are', ‘why do you have the possibilities that you do', and similar questions. So this might as well involve matters which were raised above, such as appreciation of the sacrifices of those in virtue of whom we are here and can flourish in those ways we can, politically, socially and culturally.Footnote 10
3. Some complexities and objections
What is the strength of the various ethical considerations pertinent here? The answers will often be contextual, yet some general things can also be said. The duties to remember, appreciate and feel gratitude will be dispersed. We depend on so much, the whole past that has causal efficacy on our being born and being the sort of people we are is so long and filled by so many people, that most often we cannot be expected to remember particular individuals. Likewise, unlike particular sources for owed appreciation and gratitude, general DTH-gratitude is diverse and spread out. One can be grateful to a particular ancestor for, say, keeping a certain house in the possession of the family. But while our existence is of course owed to this ancestor, it is also owed to countless other strangers, who affected the causal chain that has brought us into being. Similarly for the manifold ways in which we have benefitted from the strivings that have improved our society or culture.
At least the good, well-intentioned people among them are subjects for related duties of memory, appreciation and gratitude which are thus largely collective and general. Such duties can still be somewhat stronger or weaker, this can be a matter of debate, but it matters that we keep them, e.g. that we have some sense of gratitude to past good people. Yet these sentiments will not – and really cannot – be very personal. The duties to memory, appreciation and gratitude will typically be rather vague. Rembrandt or Churchill certainly ought and will be noted individually. But most contributors will blend into a blurred sense of the past, which will (apart from truly exceptional individuals) become only more blurred with time. These general and rather vague duties will nevertheless be crucial, in that the duties of appreciation and gratitude also fuel the obligations to be good, to be happy, and to lead a good life. But the point is that mostly they will not be firm distinct duties to anyone in particular.Footnote 11
By contrast, being moral, being happy, and leading a good life are not constrained in this way. We cannot be expected to remember the countless pertinent people, and our appreciation and gratitude to them is necessarily diffused. But if we are good, or happy, this may work well for all of the pertinent past people, in one go. While gratitude can be likened to payment, which necessarily divides, contributing by being good, happy or leading a good life is like enjoyment of a novel, which can be multiplied indefinitely to numerous readers. To the extent that we are on the side of good people, and wish to harm the interests of bad people, we can do this to all of them together. Likewise, the role we can play in redeeming history, and making the story of humanity less sad, senseless and ignoble, is not necessarily affected by the multiplicity of past people. Of course, not everything depends on us, we are but a few among the multitudes of potential people involved in this sort of project. But in serving our part, we do good, as it were, for all the deserving, good people of the past.
But why think that there are any moral considerations following from our dependence on history, in the first place? The analogy of parenting seems salient here. It is not only that ‘history’ has brought us into being, but that we exist, and flourish – enjoying political freedom, the benefits of knowledge, immense cultural treasures and so on – because of the devotion, efforts and sacrifices of many well-meaning, good people. Many of them have made considerable sacrifices, risked their lives or even gave them up ‘for us’ (with the qualifications noted above). If a parent has been very devoted and made great efforts on our behalf, then prima facie we ought to be appreciative and grateful.Footnote 12 We are, in fact, the ‘children’ of countless other people, many of whom have sacrificed much more than almost any of even the very best parents. The relationship is of course not as personal, but that does not seem to eliminate the moral duties that, I have argued, follow.
A difficulty emerges, however, at this point: I have argued that our flourishing can help benefit good dead people, fulfil their past desires, advance their interests and enhance the meaning of their lives. However, in that case, will not the flourishing of the descendants of bad people also enhance their lives, in a similar way? So, would it not, then, be bad if those descendants lived happy lives? This is indeed a difficulty. What makes it even worse is that if we go further back, ancestors begin to massively overlap, so it would seem that we are all descendants of many of the worst people of earlier human history.
However, since currently living people are innocent of the actions of their distant ancestors, and they are people of independent value and moral standing, they cannot have a duty to be unhappy, or to not live good lives, as a result of the wrongdoing of their ancestors. We are indeed all dependent for beneficial or harmful features of our material wealth, freedom, culture and so on, and indeed for our existence, upon good and bad people. Our duties, nevertheless, should, I propose, be understood as only positive, and not involve any aspects of not being happy or not living a good life. Past bad people indeed may sometimes gain from contemporary human flourishing, e.g. their interests may be furthered if the lives of their descendants go well, but such flourishing ought not to be curtailed for such a reason.Footnote 13
Another possible objection concerns the ‘nonidentity problem’ (NIP) (Parfit, Reference Parfit1984). In order to make most of the claims of this paper it is helpful to assume, first, that one is, all considered, happy that one was born, or at least finds his or her life worth living. This should not be particularly contentious. Second, and more controversially, we need to assume the possibility of benefitting and harming others by performing actions in a context that is identity-affecting. As we saw, my main claim was that – while virtually everything past people did was (usually inadvertently) identity-affecting – there are numerous things they did, and often did intentionally, that we benefit from given that we exist. And it is primarily these, and not their having brought us into existence, that generate the pertinent DTH (as we saw, some DTH are in any case unrelated to obligations to past people and hence do not depend upon these issues in any way).
To some extent I also hold that we can have DTH that are enhanced by the fact that past people made great efforts and sacrifices to have children, so that the very having of ‘us’ may generate, on our part, some obligations of gratitude. A child born in China as a second child when the one-child-only policy was in place, actually owes its existence to the risk-taking and sacrifice of the parents. If it is further assumed that the parents' motivation included something like the desire to bring another potentially-happy creature into existence, for example, then gratitude seems to be owed.
For those who hold the radical position that I cannot be benefitted or harmed by actions upon which my existence depends (e.g., in different ways, Heyd, Reference Heyd1988; Benatar, Reference Benatar2006; Weinberg, Reference Weinberg2016), we lack the sort of relationship to the past that can establish DTH. On this radical view we do not, for example, need to be grateful to our ancestors, however devoted and self-sacrificing they might have been, for it makes no sense to say that they have contributed to us.
We cannot, of course, take up here in any detail the nonidentity problem and its complexities (for my view, see Smilansky, Reference Smilansky, Matthew Liao and O'Neil2017). But in brief, I do not see a need to follow this extreme interpretation of the NIP. Once I do exist, asking myself prudentially whether I wish not to have been born does make sense. For one who has lived a life of harsh and prolonged suffering not redeemed by any good, to be sorry to exist seems perfectly reasonable. In non-existence there would have been no bad for a person (and of course also no good), as compared to the actual state, where the bad predominated. This implies that we can relevantly compare existence and non-existence, which suffices for my purposes.
A further objection concerns duties towards oneself. Particularly striking here is the duty to be happy, as a result of ideas such as benefitting the worthy dead (and perhaps harming the bad dead), or compensating and redeeming history and making the story of humanity a less sad and senseless one. The source of this duty is to others, to past people and as it were to humanity, beyond oneself, but the object of the duty, i.e. the person with regard to which one has a duty, is oneself. The idea of a moral duty to be happy is not common. Although Kant, for example, readily allowed the notion of a moral duty towards oneself, one's own happiness was not such a duty, and in contemporary thinking duties are usually considered to be to others. Morality is commonly thought to lie in opposition to happiness, so that we are often asked to give up our happiness in order to respect the rights of others (e.g. refraining from using the property of others without their permission).
It might be thought that since the source of this duty is to past others, or in some more vague sense to ‘history’ or ‘the world', it is not a duty to oneself, properly understood. But this seems to me to miss the interesting dual nature of this duty, which is a DTH but also a call to be happy oneself. One fulfils the duty only by working on and increasing one's own happiness, and the aim is simply that one be genuinely happy.
For consequentialists in particular, our happiness is part of the overall good consequences. Some leeway is pragmatically given by any sensible approach to tending to our own happiness, so that we can sustain ourselves. And if we happen to be made happy by being moral, such as in volunteering, that is of course welcomed by all major moral views. Nevertheless, the relationship between our happiness and duties (to others) typically lies in tension. So the proposal I am putting forth here is somewhat unusual. Note also that this DTH emerges from a variety of distinct sources.
The nature of happiness might be thought to pose a further and a greater source of difficulty, for happiness cannot, usually, be attained at will. Many people are by disposition sullen or not easily satisfied, and happiness for them is not easy to attain. A burden of obligatory happiness can be oppressive for suffering or temperamentally unhappy people, and this needs to be taken into account. This objection raises a real concern, but nevertheless does not eliminate my claim. The moral obligations to be happy as part of the DTH are to be understood, like most other similar duties, as a pro tanto duty to try to be happy. For some, fulfilling such a duty will be easier than for others but that is not an unfamiliar situation in other matters. And certainly most people who are not very happy can do more in order to try to be. Seeking assistance, going to therapy, working on trying to enjoy the small things in life, considering making changes to one's life in ways which will be conducive to one's happiness; such corollaries of the duty to try to be happy are what this duty entails. As in other matters, good will and an honest, consistent and self-critical attempt to do the required, is what can be expected. A person who does what he or she can but nevertheless does not succeed should be sympathized with and appreciated. If he or she nevertheless strives towards and manages to be moral, that is admirable.
Another source of difficulty can emerge from the content of the wishes of our more direct ancestors. If, say, our distant ancestors wanted their descendants to be happy, but also had very narrow and distinct ideas of what the proper pursuit of happiness might be, what do we do? The matter does not end with happiness as, for example, past views of goodness and rightness would often not be the ones we ourselves hold. If, for example, our ancestors wanted us to be very religious exactly as they were, or sexually prudish, should we give much if any weight to these preferences? Would we, for example, be harming them if we deviated from their beliefs, or ruined the narrative which incorporates both them and us, by not playing the part they had envisaged (or at least hoped) for us? For, on my view, we are making their lives worse, perhaps profoundly worse, by many things we do. And the contrast may not even always relate to what we now see as morally wrong. Suffice that our ancestors wanted us to pursue a profession or maintain some tradition that we see no reason to follow.
Here I think that we should opt for our own standards and follow what seems to us best. We live our lives, as they did theirs. We ought not to distort our values and standards because of positions we now believe to be unfounded and misguided. If this is a harm to some of our ancestors, this needs to be acknowledged but not changed at an unacceptable price. At the extreme, it might well be the case that an ancestor would believe that we do not deserve to be happy, because (say) we are transgender, or irreligious, or have left the home country. But there is no reason for us to accept this view. The connection, and obligation, exists in the broad way of being good, being happy, and leading a good life – but in our lights. If it happens that we achieve the long-sought but unachieved dream of a deceased parent, that in itself can be a form of good, and give us an added sense of meaning. But on the other hand it can be said that life is too short to busy ourselves with fulfilling dreams we do not care about, and if this further requires that we lose our own integrity or happiness, then of course we should not go in such directions.
In this context the generalized view of our duties to the past rather than to specific individuals is also helpful – it works to create a more vague good legacy to uphold, with diverse cultural, religious, or personal preferences.
Beyond these general reflections, matters would depend on context, and various compromises are possible. For example, in departing from the ideas of our ancestors, we may do so in ways that are respectful, at least in this minimal sense: that our living the life that we do will overall make for a good narrative continuation of their lives, in the big picture (if possible, it might not always be so). There are, for example, different ways to depart from their expectations: by evolving them, and by trouncing on them. And of course we had many and diverse ancestors, which were not likely consistent among themselves, and this, too, allows us to choose. At any rate, we have DTH, but they would not involve losing ourselves in the process. One advantage of the duty to be happy is that it helps contain interpretations of our other DTH which can become overbearing.
Perhaps we ought to view our ancestors not quite as they were, with their severe limitations, but in a somewhat idealized way, as people who wished for their descendants (directly, or as part of humanity) the best. And surely there is a basis for that in their actual attitudes. It seems that a person who believes that a good life consists in a traditional religious life and wishes such a life for his descendants does indeed also literally wish the best for them. Wishing the descendants the best seems to be simply an aspect – a general aspect – of their attitude. But when the general aspect and the specific requirements part company, we should opt for some more clearly idealized version of our ancestors (much like in many generous reinterpretations of scripture in light of contemporary needs and values). Such versions would have respected our own understanding, autonomy and integrity, and wished that we followed the good and pursue our paths to happiness and to living a good life, even while being themselves more sceptical than our actual ancestors probably were.
Finally, on this point, it might be pressed that perhaps we can indeed discount the expectations of our ancestors, if we do not care about the things they did. But then why would this not also apply to our happiness, if we do not care about our happiness? In reply, I think that the distinction among the two issues can be sustained. Setting aside the strictly moral differences of opinion between ourselves and them, what matters here is, roughly, the goodness of our lives, which, we are assuming, matter (or would matter) to many of our ancestors. While we can and indeed should discount their views about what a good life implies when we think them mistaken, or irrelevant to our preferences, we cannot discount our own happiness or, more broadly, our well-being in the same way. Our well-meaning ancestors wishing our happiness cannot be mistaken in that, in the same way that they might be mistaken if they wished us to be religiously observant or to keep up the family tradition and, say, remain butchers; our happiness clearly is in our interest, while the way to achieve it is more debatable.
It might be also objected that the DTH would not add to the obligation to be good. These involve moral reasons that we have anyway. If we do not already care about injustice or suffering, why should we care about reasons to be moral that relate to even more distant matters? And if we already care about present (or future) evil, what do these past-related reasons add? The worry here is that these reasons are redundant.
I think that there are two matters here. First, given our assumption about the possibility of harming or benefitting the dead, the history-based reasons make our reasons to be/do good stronger. By analogy, I need to give weight to my promise to my mother to do certain things, but if I also made a similar promise to my grandmother, then my obligation is stronger (even if my grandmother has since died). Second, there is a motivational aspect here. Many people, in fact, often deny or discount moral obligations to the currently alive, such as to the geographically distant, but nevertheless care about their heritage, about their ancestors, nation, or culture. Enlisting such sentiments to morality is manifestly possible, and some internalization of the idea of DTH, in ways such as we have seen, can do good pragmatically.
In terms of motivation, in some cases the ‘normal', non-DTH sources of obligations will be ‘more than enough', for nearly every person (e.g. obligations not to murder). And presumably a perfectly moral person will have nearly all of her moral obligations already ‘covered’ by ‘normal’ morality. Yet for most people, who are not perfect, in motivational terms, and with much of morality (e.g. imperfect duties) perhaps nearly for everyone, the further reasons given by the DTH can be salient.
Another objection can be put in terms of the 'overpopulation' of moral obligations and, indeed, concerns. As it is, people confront multiple and complex moral, and more broadly value-based, obligations of various strength. Why add to these the DTH? In order to consider this we need to separate the question of the existence of DTH, and the different question of their strength vis a vis other, more conventional, concerns and duties. As to the very existence of DTH, the case here is based upon the sort of arguments posed earlier in this paper. If indeed there are DTH, then that is something that we need to take account of, insofar as we wish to be moral. The duty is not ‘added'; it is discovered. The ‘overpopulation’ issue is one that needs to be dealt with as in other cases, by exploring the different weights we need to give to various concerns, but simply ignoring the DTH, if these indeed exist, cannot do.
It might be further pressed against my position that we are being led into implausible complexity and absurdity. It seems deeply counterintuitive that each of our mundane or self-centred acts actually bears on the well-being of multitudes of past individuals, that we therefore have duties to these individuals that we have never noticed, that familiar duties relating to beneficence or justice actually extend to cover a huge number of past people in ways hitherto ignored. I cannot explore the full complexity here, but it would seem that there is a potential here for philosophically intriguing paradoxes reminiscent of Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion.Footnote 14
Particularly if we allow concern over the lives of past bad people worry us, we will get into highly unpleasant territory. If what we do now literally affects the well-being of past people, and one's being happy is good for one's ancestors, then numerous awful people's lives are getting better and better. A striking example would be Genghis Khan, who was manifestly a moral monster, but has the most direct descendants of any single known past figure. This might also mean, for example, that even the worst punishments to bad people might get outweighed over time, making their lives overall wonderful. More cheerfully, the miserable might console themselves that at least some past bad people are getting what they deserve, at least after their death. And some people who had short and not terribly positive lives perhaps may turn out to have some of the best lives simply because they had numerous descendants, many of whom were/are reasonably happy.
I argued before that we need to act only on positive duties such as to be happy, and not make ourselves (or others) suffer so that bad ancestors will thus become worse off after their death. This is similar to the idea that we ought not to make the children of currently alive evil people suffer, so as to harm the parents. It is not nonsensical to wish to do so. Consider a person all of whose children were murdered; she may rightly cringe if she sees that the murderer, when released from prison, enjoys the company of his own children. Yet surely she or anyone else cannot harm the murderer's innocent children so as to prevent his happiness. One way of limiting some of the potential complexities and absurdities of the idea of the DTH, is to focus only on the positive side, as we ought to do morally for other reasons. Footnote 15
One further way in which the perplexities and potential paradoxes of the idea of DTH can be limited is through a time discount. This would not, of course, be the only consideration. A Resistance member who suffered terrible hardship and then gave his life to save democracy warrants a bigger debt than a closer in time, but docile and mediocre, ancestor. Nevertheless it makes sense that any obligations to past people will weaken, if not disappear altogether, the farther they go in time. By analogy, if a person has been devoted, loving and giving for all his life, it is reasonable for him to expect to be remembered and appreciated by his children and grandchildren, but hardly by the grand-children's grandchildren. Likewise, if one's grandchildren are miserable, this makes one's life worse, and if all of them die young, this is a great blow to one's desires and interests, even if it happens after one's death. By contrast, if one's descendants ten generations down the line die young, this can hardly be a blow of the same magnitude.
We saw above that the number of descendants that one has appears to have a great importance, and makes one, as it were, hostage to fortune, after one's death. But it is plausible that this significantly decreases after a few generations. One does not seem to have a particular interest in the well-being of those people who happen to be one's descendants, after a few generations.
There are interesting questions here concerning further spheres, which we cannot enter into in detail. But just by way of illustration, one can similarly sympathize with the desire of a good author that her books remain in libraries and be read after her death, but not the expectation to live on as an author for a millennium. The birth and flourishing of Jews is, as we noted, a metaphorical ‘finger in Hitler's eye’ and a setback to dead Nazis who did all they could to extinguish Jewish existence. The Romans massacred hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews and tried to eradicate Jewish national existence nearly two thousand years ago, and there is therefore something morally pleasing in the fact that the Roman empire is long gone, while the Jewish nation is still here. Nevertheless it seems clear that there are far stronger DTH to remember Holocaust victims and perhaps do things for Jewish survival out of the concern with the shorter distance, as compared to worrying over the Romans of two thousand years ago.Footnote 16
Recall also that, in most cases, the duties will not be contrastive, but exist in parallel. It means that the DTH will provide further support for being moral, as also for leading a good life. Such reasons are already typically put forth by ‘non-historical’ concerns and, if I am right, we now have to add the history-based ones, but this will typically go in the same direction. The obligations to (in some sense) remember, appreciate and be grateful are hardly, in themselves, very demanding, and should not interfere with any moral duties to contemporaries. The obligation to be moral will be strengthened by those further, history-based considerations. This is very important. It means, first, that typically we can avoid conflicts between ‘duties to the present’ (DTP) and the DTH. Second, it means that the idea of DTH straightforwardly strengthens the basis for moral resolve and provides further motivation for being moral, as such.
The independent ‘new’ pro tanto obligation to try to be happy, as part of the DTH, admittedly complicates things. To some extent, such DTH-based concern with one's own happiness may lay in tension with other, familiar ('traditional') obligations to be moral even at the expense of one's own happiness. But again, moral and value-based concerns are what they are, and after we have determined their existence, we need to deal with all of them and balance them as best we can. So here as well, the possible influence of any self-concerning DTH such as caring for one's own happiness, does matter, but cannot be an a priori consideration against the existence of such a duty. History is, I have claimed, an important source for potential moral duties and, as with other sources, can to some extent create duties that will lie in tension (such as to be moral and to be happy).Footnote 17
