"Giving the Dead Their Due"
by Michael Ridge

Abstract:
James Forman famously demanded that Christian churches and Jewish Synagogues owed $500 million to African Americans for the role those institutions played in their exploitation and enslavement. More recently, Representative John Conyers and others have argued in Congress for the establishment of a Committee to explore the issue of reparations to African Americans for the injustices of slavery. There are precedents for such claims. Holocaust victims and their descendants have pressed successfully for reparations from Germany as well as Swiss banks and corporations complicit in the Holocaust. One more general philosophical question raised by such cases is how we can make sense of duties of reparations involving injustices, like slavery, that were committed long enough ago that all of the original victims are now dead. For even in these kinds of cases, the claims of their descendants often strike a deep chord and should not be dismissed lightly. On the other hand, attempts to provide a philosophical defense of duties of reparation in such cases has proven surprisingly difficult. In light of the difficulties plaguing existing approaches, I propose a somewhat unorthodox alternative which easily avoids all of the difficulties facing its more traditional rivals. On the proposed account, duties of reparation may be owed to the dead themselves.