Together with Agnès Baehni, we’ve just published an open access article on what we owe to our past-selves. It’s arguably one of the most puzzling questions I’ve had the chance to explore—I hope you find the piece engaging.
Read it here: https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqaf053
Abstract:
This paper offers a positive account of moral duties to past-selves, based on two plausible beliefs, (1) we have moral duties toward persons who are no longer present; and (2) we have moral duties toward ourselves. Specifically, our inquiry centers on moral duties toward our past-selves. We begin by addressing various objections challenging the viability of such duties and subsequently present three arguments supporting their plausibility. These arguments draw from hypothetical time-travel scenarios and the arbitrary exclusion of past-selves from the moral framework. In conclusion, we argue that recognizing moral duties to our past-selves is paradoxically crucial for combating moral egocentrism in its temporal dimension.
