Their Turn under the Sun: Matthias Fritsch and the Question of Intergenerational Responsibility

Abstract

This essay addresses Matthias Fritsch’s argument in Taking Turns with the Earth that in order to respond properly and responsibly to today’s climate crisis one must begin with a rethinking of ethics in terms of intergenerational responsibility. After affirming Fritsch’s argument that ethics must indeed be reconceived through an analysis of our fundamental intergenerationality and our obligation to “take turns with the earth” alongside other generations, the essay retraces Fritsch’s use of the work of Derrida on time, ethics, mourning, and the turn-taking of democracy to make this case. Finally, the essay proposes Homer’s Iliad as a friendly supplement to Fritsch’s plea to take turns with the earth insofar as ethical responsibility is there understood in terms of the way successive generations—like plants, or like leaves that grow, wither, and die—take their turn not only with the earth but under the sun.