As we look upstream and downstream along the river of time, beyond the scope of adjacent generations and concurrent lives, numerous ethical paradoxes, puzzles and perplexities emerge. And while most would agree that it would be morally reprehensible for our generation to “trash the future” in a spree of resource depletion and environmental destruction, thus devastating the lives of successors we will never know, we are hard- pressed to explicate the ethical concepts or to articulate the ethical theory which might best express and condemn such moral dereliction. Fundamental to this puzzle is the apparent non- reciprocity across generations, typified by the old cynical taunt, “what has posterity ever done for me?” Strictly speaking, nothing
