Book Review: Future Freedoms: Intergenerational Justice, Democratic Theory, and Ancient Greek Tragedy and Comedy, by Elizabeth K. Markovits

• Date: 01 August 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591719836185
• Published date: 01 August 2019
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Political Theory

2019, Vol. 47(4) 581 –616

© The Author(s) 2019

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Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Future Freedoms: Intergenerational Justice, Democratic Theory, and Ancient Greek

Tragedy and Comedy, by Elizabeth K. Markovits. New York and Abingdon:

Routledge, 2018, 184 pp.

Reviewed by: Demetra Kasimis, Political Science, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL,

USA

DOI: 10.1177/0090591719836185

Elizabeth K. Markovits’ book Future Freedoms: Intergenerational Justice,

Democratic Theory, and Ancient Greek Tragedy and Comedy begins from the

premise that we live in an “intergenerational world” and that democratic citi-

zenries act so as to try and disavow or overcome this fact. That we might not

only be affected by the actions of previous generations but also shape the

political realities of future ones is generally regarded not as a permanent

political condition to take heed of in political life, according to Markovits,

but as a constraint to manage or throw off. Discomfiture marks a present

generation’s sensibility to the “as-yet-nonexistent future” (3), and this stance

reinforces and is reinforced by a modern investment in aligning freedom with

“sovereignty—individual, state, and generational” (2).

Future Freedoms sets its sights on a different picture in which people are

part of an “assemblage” that is “larger” than their own generation and there-

fore “temporally unbounded” (40). Markovits wants this conception to

ground a normative vision of political action. Taking intergenerationality

seriously not only orients us differently to present political questions but also

reveals that we have an obligation to safeguard the freedom of future genera-

tions. This is “intergenerational justice,” the cornerstone of the book’s argu-

ment, and it requires “leaving” persons in the future “as much range as

possible to bring about their own impact on the world” (125). It turns out that

we are accountable to them.

The book builds this account of intergenerational justice in three ways.

First, it uses the notion of intergenerationality as a through line to traverse

some familiar democratic theory territory: the introductory chapter criti-

cally engages with the limits and political stakes of arguments that at bot-

tom understand political activity as control over others and future outcomes;

836185PTXXXX10.1177/0090591719836185Political TheoryBook Reviews

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