Thomas Paine and the Idea of Intergenerational Rights
2025-06-05
Thomas Paine’s and Thomas Jefferson’s writings on the relations between generations continue to attract much attention among political theorists and historians of political thought. They have been described as two of the most important theorists of the intergenerational characteristics of rights and of the significance of ascribing “sovereignty” to every generation. Jefferson’s work has often been portrayed as shaping Paine’s thinking on intergenerational obligations. This article contends that such characterizations of Paine misapprehend the development of his thought. By examining previously overlooked writings in Paine’s corpus, it becomes clear that his account of intergenerational rights and obligations was substantially different from Jefferson’s. The supposed parallels between their work obscure more than they illuminate. Indeed, the most interesting arguments Paine offered for reconceiving the capacities of each generation have thereby been neglected. These conceptual resources are worth returning to, especially given that Paine’s and Jefferson’s work on intergenerational relations is often mobilized to theorize a range of contemporary problems from constitutional interpretation to climate change.