What We Owe the Futur by William MacAskill - Summary and Review

In What We Owe the Future, philosopher William MacAskill attempts a moral reorientation of historic proportions. His thesis is disarmingly simple but ethically radical: future people matter, there may be an extraordinary number of them, and we can significantly affect the quality of their lives. From this, he argues, flows a powerful imperative—longtermism—the idea that influencing the long-term future should be among our highest priorities.

Longtermism, unpacked

MacAskill builds his case through a blend of thought experiments, historical analogies, and quantitative forecasting. He begins by asking us to imagine living every human life in chronological order—a jarring reminder of just how brief the modern era is relative to human history, and how vast the future could be. If humanity survives even a modest portion of the time Earth remains habitable (let alone if we become an interstellar species), almost all human lives will be lived in the future. The stakes of our decisions today, then, are potentially astronomical.

What follows is a tour through the moral, empirical, and practical scaffolding of longtermist thought. MacAskill addresses obvious challenges: Can we really predict long-term consequences? How can we prioritize distant lives when current suffering remains urgent? His answer is cautious optimism. History offers precedents—slavery abolition, the U.S. Constitution, even Shakespearean poetry—that have had millennia-spanning impacts. Today’s choices, especially around AI, biotechnology, and global governance, may have similarly durable effects.

Trajectory shifts and existential risks

The book distinguishes two primary ways of influencing the future: safeguarding civilization’s survival and steering its trajectory. The former involves minimizing existential risks—events that would cause human extinction or irrevocable collapse, such as engineered pandemics or AI misalignment. The latter, more subtle but perhaps equally consequential, concerns shaping the moral direction of society. If our values become “locked in” by powerful technologies or authoritarian regimes, they may guide billions of lives across millennia.

Here MacAskill is at his most philosophically ambitious, using a "Significance-Persistence-Contingency" framework to assess how our actions might echo across time. He urges a careful, probabilistic mindset—a willingness to act under uncertainty when the stakes are high.

Critical lens and review

While the book is admirably clear and earnest, its framing is not without controversy. Some readers may find the utilitarian undercurrent alienating, especially its speculative arithmetic of lives unborn. Others may argue that the urgency of climate justice, inequality, and political instability today risks being eclipsed by abstract futurism. MacAskill does attempt to address this tension, emphasizing that longtermist goals can (and often do) align with short-term improvements—such as decarbonization, which benefits both current and future generations.

More troubling is the question of epistemic humility. Predicting the values, desires, and dangers of the next million years may be a project as hubristic as it is noble. Yet, MacAskill’s tone is refreshingly open and self-critical. He acknowledges the book as an early attempt to map a vast and uncertain moral terrain.

Final take

Ultimately, What We Owe the Future is less a definitive guide than an invitation to think at planetary and civilizational scale. It challenges readers to stretch their moral imaginations—and their timelines. Whether or not one fully embraces longtermism, MacAskill offers a vital prompt: to see ourselves not just as heirs of history, but as ancestors.

Short Summary: The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

The Souls of Black Folk (in Castilian The souls of black people ) is a classic of American literature published by WEB Du Bois in 1903 . It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a basic tenet for the history of African-American literature . 

The Souls of Black Folk contains several essays on the breed , some of which had previously been published in the Atlantic Monthly magazine . Du Bois drew from his own experience to develop this pioneering work on what it was like to be an African American in American society. The Souls of Black Folk , outside of its notable place in African American history , also occupies an important place in the social sciences as one of the earliest sociological works . 

Chapters of The Souls of Black Folk

Each chapter in The Souls of the Black People is headed by an epigraph , usually a quote from a European poet, accompanied by the transcription of the melody (but without the lyrics) of a black spiritual chant about sadness, suffering, hope and the affirmation. Their importance lies in the fact that they are both original and communal - designating a group of people rather than an individual - and that they represent Du Bois' call to the struggle of African Americans. 

Chapter 1 provides an overview of Du Bois's thesis for the book: that blacks in the South have the right to vote, to a good education, and to be treated equally and fairly .

The first chapter also introduces the famous metaphor of the veil . According to Du Bois, this veil is worn by all African Americans, because their worldview and opportunities for economic, political, and social potential are so different from that of whites. The veil is a visual manifestation of racial discrimination , a problem that Du Bois worked his entire life to remedy. Du Bois sublimates the function of the veil when he refers to it as a gift of clairvoyance to African Americans: thus, they simultaneously characterize the veil as a blessing or a curse. 

The second chapter, The Dawn of Freedom , covers the history of the Liberation Agency during reconstruction.

Chapters 3 through 6 focus on education. Du Bois argued against Booker T. Washington , who argued that blacks should focus solely on industrial education, and advocated the incorporation of a classical education to train leaders and educators in the black community.

Chapters 7 through 10 contain sociological studies on the black community. Du Bois investigated the influence segregation and discrimination have had on Black people. He argued that much of the negative stereotypes of blacks as lazy, violent and naive were the results of the treatment of whites.

In Chapter 10, On the Faith of the Fathers , Du Bois argues that the Black Church is deeply linked to black political movements. Instead of seeing this as a positive, you see it as a weakness that you must overcome. He sees the Church as the last remnants of tribal life that must be overthrown in order for black civilization to prosper. He affirms that from the middle of the 18th century the black slave was sunk to the bottom of the economic scale and that for this reason he lost all the charm in the world. Then the Church offered him salvationIn the other world, which he clung to. On the contrary, for Du Bois, the then slave, and the now "black man", must contemplate salvation in this life to build a culture of economic prosperity. However, he said that this was much better than the great Christian Church in which he was never excluded. It offered a future program for the Church to purchase real estate for its members to increase their economic status in society.

The last chapters of the The Souls of Black Folk are dedicated to the stories of people. Chapter 11, On the Death of the Firstborn , tells the story of Du Bois's own son and his untimely death. In the next chapter, the life of Alexander Crummell is a short biography of a black priest in the Episcopal Church. Chapter XIII, On the Coming of John , is the fictional story of a Georgia boy who goes to college and on his return is rejected by his black community and by the white patricians of his city.

The last chapter of The Souls of Black Folk is about black music and refers to the short musical passages transcribed at the beginning of each of the other chapters. Here's what Du Bois had to say about these slave songs: I know that these songs are the articulate message of the slave to the world

Short Summary: End of History by Francis Fukuyama

The End of History and the last man by Francis Fukuyama

The idea of ​​"the end of history" requires Francis Fukuyama to define what history is. History according to Fukuyama is a chronology, an attempt to put a collection of events into a specific and continuous framework. Hegel's worldview, from which Fukuyama emerges, is that history has a direction - progress. Hegel explains history as the "Great Parade of Liberties" - the history in which universal liberty is the founding idea in historical development. If we were once slaves, then landowners and slowly freedoms expand throughout history.

In contrast to Marx, for whom what motivates the world is reality and the consciousness derived from it, Hegel argued that the motive of the world is only consciousness, ideology.

The idea of ​​"the end of history" was coined by Hegel in 1812 following Napoleon's great victory at the Battle of Vienna which following Napoleon's decision determined that the values ​​of the French Empire, i.e. the liberal democratic state and liberty became a pattern by which the whole world would align. Fukuyama argues that indeed, as Hegel predicted, the pattern of the Western liberal state is a winning pattern that the whole world will gradually align with and slowly the values ​​of modernity are grasped in countries and more countries are becoming democratic, liberal, etc ...

 

Fukuyama claimed that in the 20th century there were challenges to this pattern, which Hegel did not foresee:

Communism - an approach that denies the universal freedoms expressed in the idea of ​​the free market. The communist approach collapsed in the late 20th century.

Fascism-Nazism - approaches that did not accept the concept of freedom as a legitimate concept, or the idea of ​​universal equality between human beings. Therefore, according to Fukuyama, these attitudes in advance were doomed to disappear, and the loss in the Second World War only accelerated this.

Nationalism - ostensibly, moderate nationalism is supposed to be integrated into modernity (nationalism = defines the state). But the national-nationalist ideology (separatism, racism) is in conflict with the universal principles, and will therefore struggle for relevance and weaken over time.

Religious Fundamentalism - Fukuyama has not been able to deal with these ideas. The problem as we have analyzed it - the lack of universal elements, that is, fundamentalism cannot be attractive to those who do not belong to a particular religion.

The end of history is a stage in which all these challenges no longer exist, the insight that the Western nation-state is the model that the whole world will go and adopt. Once these insights are established, according to Fukuyama, we will reach the end of history.

In 1989, when Fukuyama delivered his speech and published the article about the end of history, we were in fact in the midst of the collapse of the only alternative to modernity - communism. Moreover, a year earlier the Iran-Iraq war ended which was an exceptional and isolated case of a long-standing system of two states neither of which represented either the Communist bloc on the one hand or the US on the other, and yet it was a bloody, heavy and significant war. Fukuyama argues that we are witnessing a world that can now be divided between the world that ended history and the world that has not yet finished history.

"The end of history" was initially criticized but in the winter of 1991-1992 it turns out that Fukuyama was right and the first Gulf War breaks out - the US goes to war against Iraq to evacuate Iraq from Kuwait. From the Warsaw Pact, Latin American and East Asian countries (Japan, Korea and China) and certain Muslim countries supported by the regime (Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey). On the Iraqi side are Iraq, Iran (which has been Iraq's enemy for years) and other Muslim countries like Syria ... "B. 

see The End of History (Fukuyama) Explained

Related summaries:

Jihad vs. McWorld / Benjamin Barber

Hardt and Negri - Empire

Disjunction and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy -  Arjun Appadurai

Benedict Anderson - Imagined Communities

Roland Robertson on Globalization in "Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity 
Hegel  - Phenomenology of Spirit
Hegel on Universal Consciousness and Reason
Hegel on the Absolute

Short summary: Kierkegaard - History of Philosophy

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) reacted against Hegel's philosophy which was the dominant one in his time. Kierkegaard emphasized the significance of the individual. Thought Hegel obscured the individual’s responsibility of their own life. Kierkegaard  wrote a lot about religion and thought that either your into it or not, but don’t be half-assed about it. He’s an existentialist. He draws his entire existence into his philosophical reflection. “The truth for me.” The truth according to Kierkegaard is subjective (really important truths are personal.) Things we can know through reason are unimportant. (Only faith is really important!) If you try to prove the existence of God, you lose faith and passion. This was his “social criticism.” Kierkegaard hated conformity and the notion that the individual is bound to others. for Kierkegaard there are three stages of life: aesthetic, ethical and religious. In the aesthetic stage, one lives for the moment and can have a feeling of emptiness. In the ethical, one contemplates the seriousness and consistency of their ethical choices, finally people settle into Christianity...

For more about the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard you can go to our Guide to Kierkegaard's Philosophy which goes into greater length. You can also make use of out list of Kierkegaard's terms and concepts. or our summary of his famous book Fear and Trembling. 

Previous summary: Georg Hegel 

Back to the history of philosophy 


Good to books to start exploring the history of philosophy:

  

Short Summary: Hegel - History of Philosophy

Georg Hegel (1770-1831) drew his philosophy for the Romantic phrase ‘world spirit’ but used this phrase differently. Hegel meant, “the sum of human utterances.” Truth according to Hegel  is subjective and there is no truth above human reason as it is manifested in human history. All philosophers before Hegel said that there were some timeless truths. Hegel thought that human cognition changed from generation to generation in constant flux which drove history itself forwards towards the knowledge of the absolute. You can’t say that one is better than another. Thoughts at a particular time simply shape the future as they are the result of the past. So Hegel argues that you can’t claim a thought to be correct forever, just at a particular point in time since it is always conditioned by history (this view is called "Historicism"). A thought may be reasonable now, but not necessarily in the future. In Hegel opinion you cannot detach anyone from historical context. 

The world spirit progresses according to Hegel through a mechanism calls "Dialectics" (Hegel's is a idealist dialectics as opposed to Marx's material dialectics). There is a dialectic process – thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis. A thought, followed by a dissension, followed by the synthesis of those two ideas. That which is right survives. The thought that women couldn’t think was ruled by opinions and arbitrary inclinations. According to Hegel we need the tension of an opposite to define a term. Hegel also opposed individualism – emphasized importance of family, civil society and state. Everyone is born into a historical background and state. In Hegel's view one must find a higher place in the state. The state is more than the sum of the people. (subjective, objective + absolute spirit..

to know more on Hegel's philosophy go to our page on Hegel or the Hegel reading list and guide.

You can also check out these summaries of Hegel's thought:

Hegel on Religion, Christianity, Morality and Ethics

Hegel - Fragments of a System

Hegel on Idealism, Fichte and Schelling

Hegel on the Absolute 

Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit

Hegel On Self-Consciousness

Hegel on Master-Slave Dialectic

Hegel on Universal Consciousness and Reason

Previous summary: Romanticism
Next summary: Soren Kierkegaard

Back to the history of philosophy 


Good to books to start exploring the history of philosophy:

  

short summary: Natural Philosophers - History of Philosophy

Each philosopher or group of philosophers from the natural philosophers has a project. This group wanted to explain the natural world.

Questions posed:         Is there a basic substance?

                                    Can water turn to wine?

                                    How can earth and water produce a frog?

                                    How does transformation occur in nature?

Xenophanes(570 BC) – wanted an explanation of how god created man in his own image.

Thales(585 BS) – thought all life was made of water.

Anaximenes(526 BC) – air made all life, water is condensed air.

Parmenides(480 BC) – can’t trust your senses, things don’t really change, everything stays the same.

Heraclitus(480 BC) – there is constant change, characterized by opposites

Empedocles(430 BC) – both of the above are right & wrong. Four basic substances: earth, air, fire, & water. We can combine these to make everything. Love binds while strife separates – this explains the chemical changes. Raised the question, “how can I see a flower?” Believed that the eye contained all four substances.

Anaxagoras(428 BC) – everything is built from an infinite number of small particles. But, the whole is in every part (like DNA). He thought that the sun was a red hot stone and that the planets didn’t make their own light.

Democritus(370 BC) – Hypothesized atoms – you can use them over & over again. Believed in nothing but material things(materialist). Did not believe in a soul.

More questions:           Why is Lego ingenius?

                                    Do you believe in Fate?

                                    Is sickness punishment from the gods?

                                    What forces govern the course of history?

Fatalism is a belief in predestiny. Greeks believed in Oracle at Delphi. Influenza means malign influence from the stars. Hip. oath + moderation&healtly lifestyle -> good health

Next summary: Classic Greek Philosophers

Back to the history of philosophy 


Good to books to start exploring the history of philosophy:

Dracula: An Historical Analysis

By John Madigan

  Dracula was published in 1897 and it is a perfect example of the Victorian era culture. The characters are all either upper class or middle class, well-educated and all good Christians. Dracula is the stereotypical evil foreigner, out to conquer England (and by extension, the British Empire), not to mention corrupting pure English women with his foreign ways. The heroes, fine examples of Victorian manhood, form a group of modern day knights, sworn to save Mina’s immortal soul that has been corrupted by Dracula’s influence. The men not only succeed in driving Dracula from English soil, they pursue him to Transylvania, and destroy him in sight of his castle.  

  Class, wealth, and education are very important to the novel’s plot. Our heroes include an aristocrat, two doctors, a solicitor and a school teacher. Lucy is wealthy as well and Dracula is a Count.  Arthur Holmwood’s status is useful in influencing various sources in providing information normally not available to the rest of the group. His wealth enables them to pursue Dracula back to Transylvania and buy the supplies they need. Seward and Van Helsing, draw upon their medical knowledge. Van Helsing is also knowledgeable in the law, as is Harker. Mina is well-organized, knows short hand and is proficient in the use of a typewriter.

  Dracula can be seen as a struggle of Good versus Evil. The heroes are Christians, all being members of the Church of England, except for Van Helsing. He’s Catholic and readily uses the cross, the Host and prayer to ward off Dracula and his brides. Despite being good Protestants, the others accept these symbols of faith without question. Harker, who at the beginning of the novel, reacts skeptically at being presented with a cross during his journey to Dracula’s castle, soon changes his opinion after his experiences there. He eagerly accepts Van Helsing’s tools in the fight against Dracula.  All the characters dedicate themselves saving Dracula’s victims from eternal damnation by destroying them. The heroes see it as their Christian duty to destroy Dracula to prevent him making any more of his kind. After being forced by Dracula to take his blood, Mina sees herself as unclean and is willing to die at the hands of her own husband if she becomes a full vampire.

 They way Victorians travelled and communicated was changing, and the characters in the novel make good use of this new technology in their struggles against Dracula. For example, Van Helsing journeys to and from Amsterdam on a regular basis early in the novel, and later, Dracula is pursued by steam ship and train as he flees to his castle. The telegraph is used regularly and to good effect in keeping the group’s efforts coordinated. Seward uses a gramophone to record his diary and Mina uses a typewriter to produce a combined manuscript of all the groups very convenient diaries. Holmwood even uses the precise record-keeping when it comes to shipping to track Dracula’s passage back to Transylvania. 

  Besides reflecting Victorian ideas of class, religion and the wonders of progress, another subject that was much in the Victorian consciousness at the time. Stoker was writing during a period of a resurgence of interest in Irish myths and one weaves itself into the plot. That is the belief in changelings. Irish peasants in the 19^th century still literally believed that the Fae could seduce, abduct, and replace children and women with one of their own. There were many infamous cases of those believed to be changelings being abused and even killed. One such case, the murder of Bridget Cleary in 1895. The husband and relatives of this woman, convinced she was a changeling burned her. The case was reported nationally and internationally.

  During his time at Dracula’s castle, Harker is horrified to witness Dracula give a baby he’s abducted to his three brides. He does it very casually, and you get the idea he does this on a regular basis. It must be common knowledge as later the child’s mother appears at the castle and begs to get her child back. Obviously, the child wasn’t replaced by a changeling, but the similarity is clear. Later, after Lucy is turned into a vampire, she abducts children to feed from as well.

  When a person was suspected of have been being replaced by a changeling, there were so-called “faery doctors” that families could turn to for help. These individuals were experts in determining the true nature of a suspected changeling. Physical harm, for example, burning a changeling, was one of the tried and true methods of making it reveal itself, driving it away and supposedly forcing the faeries to return the person who had been abducted. Van Helsing performs the role of “faery doctor” when called in by Seward to diagnose what’s wrong with Lucy. Van Helsing uses garlic and the cross to protect her from being turned into a vampire, tying to prevent her from losing her soul, a form of spiritual abduction. He fails in his efforts, so he and the other men go to Lucy’s tomb, trapping and destroying her. They don’t burn her, but they do violate her body by staking then beheading her. The real Lucy isn’t returned, but her soul is freed to go to its final reward.  

  Mina then is targeted by Dracula, eventually being forced to drink Dracula’s blood. Disturbingly enough, she is forced to do this with her husband lying next to her in bed, unaware this is happening. Not only does Dracula begin the process of turning her into a vampire, he also makes her symbolically perform an act of infidelity. Van Helsing acting as “faery doctor”, tries to slow the process of Mina turning. She is also burned, but only on the forehead, when touched with a holy wafer. She is quite willing to be killed if she is “replaced” by the hands of her husband. An interesting reversal of what Bridget Cleary’s husband did to her.

  Mina’s process of being turned seems slower than Lucy’s turning. The difference is not only her being aware of what has happened to her, but also her understanding of it. By the process of organizing the group’s various diaries, she acts like a folklorist of a kind. She can see Dracula for what he is, understanding his strengths, weaknesses and his motivations. If she were an Irish peasant wife, her having a way to support herself without total reliance on her husband would make her a likely candidate for being accused of being a changeling. Fortunately for her, she is English, shows a knowledge of her position as a woman and is surrounded by people who don’t attribute her native intelligence as a sign of being different.

  Dracula is a novel on many levels. It praises Victorian culture, showing the proper way of doing things. The class system is reinforced, showing upper and middle-class heroes defending English women from the depredations of a threatening foreigner. It shows the wonders of 19^th century technology and the inevitable triumph of science over superstition. Lastly, it is a novel that reflects the fears of society at the time, not only the British fear of foreigners and immigrants, Victorian fear of sex, and the Irish fear of the dangers of the supernatural world. These are some of the reasons that the novel has endured, lending itself to constant reinterpretation, by scholars, readers, and the media.

  The novel has always fascinated me on a personal level, inspiring me to not only consume media dealing with vampires, but to consider the facts behind the legends. It has lead me to discover fascinating facts and it’s interesting to see how Stoker altered the legends to suit the purposes of the novel. Most interesting is that in the original stories, vampires were the reanimated corpses of family members that preyed on their still living relatives. Stoker changed this, fusing the historical Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, with the legends, creating a proper foe for his brave English heroes. Once Dracula became a stage play, he was made more a more elegant figure, gaining a refined air and, surprisingly, becoming a romantic figure to female audience members. Vampires, with a few modifications by the media, became the original “goths”, seducing the opposite sex while their undead state. This lead to them becoming the anti-hero, and often the hero of various works of fiction in print and on stage and screen. It has been a long and interesting journey from Nosferatu (1922) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) to Twilight (2008). The changes in how vampires being seen reflecting each generation’s unconscious fears and desires.

 

References

McGrath, Thomas. "Fairy Faith and Changelings: The Burning of Bridget Cleary in 1895." Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 71.282 (1982): 178-84. Web.

Shimokusu, Masaya. "Corpse or Changeling? —An Irish Folkloric Aspect of Bram Stoker’s Dracula1." Doshisha University English Literature Research, 84 (2009): 57-70.