Being Responsible for the Past : Reparative Responses to Historic Injustice

Many think that there is nothing to be done now to address past wrongs. This book presents an argument for how past wrongs and historic injustices can be partially repaired in the present, and demonstrates who is morally required to repair them.

Many think that there is nothing to be done now to address past wrongs. The intergenerational harm argument connects ongoing harms with past wrongs, but this argument faces problems: it relies on empirical claims connecting wrongs of the past with harms in the present, claims with which not everyone agrees, and since the wrongdoers existed in the past, it is difficult to say who owes reparations today. In this book, Susan Stark discusses cases of wrongs and injustices - focusing on genocides, the transatlantic slave trade, and social discrimination and oppression of various kinds -- and explores the complex ethical problem of how past wrongs and historic injustices can be partially repaired in the present, and of who is morally required to repair them. She argues for a new way of thinking about reparations, and shows that it is possible to make some repair in the present for wrongs done by others in the past.