The Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences invites you to the webinar Moral Obligations to Past Selves, which will take place on April 9, 2024 at 1:30 p.m. The speakers of the event will be Vincent Grandjean (University of Zurich) and Agnès Baehni (University of Geneva). Martin Muránsky (Head of the Department of Normativity and Human Rights Research, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences) will give an introductory speech. The moderator of the event is Tomáš Kollárik (Department of Normativity and Human Rights Research, Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences).
You can also participate in the event in the meeting room of the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, room no. 94.
Abstract
The lecture will address the implications of two widely accepted beliefs:
- we have moral obligations to persons who are no longer present,
- We have moral obligations to ourselves.
Specifically, our exploration focuses on moral obligations to our past selves. At the outset, we address the various objections calling into question the viability of these obligations, and then present two arguments in support of their plausibility. These arguments are based on hypothetical scenarios of time travel and the arbitrary exclusion of past selves from the moral framework. In conclusion, we argue that the recognition of moral obligations towards our past selves is paradoxically crucial to the fight against moral egocentrism in its temporal dimension.
The event is supported by the grant VEGA2/0118/24, The Social Nature of Normativity as a Starting Point for Explaining the Relationship between Individual and Collective Autonomy.
Edited by: Tomáš Kollárik, FiÚ SAS, v. v. i.
Photo: unsplash.com/ Aron Visuals