Dealing with the Nuclear Threat

At first glance, George Kateb’s stirring plea for renewed moral reflection on the subject of human extinction seems utterly unobjectionable. The nuclear situation does create a radical discontinuity with the past: for the first time human extinction is conceivable not as the result of some natural disaster, but as the work of our own hands. It is to Kateb’s credit that he has reopened the discussion. The philosophical position he defends with respect to this issue is a coherent on...