The Moral Desirability of Presentism

Abstract

In a presentist world there are no past events and thus a fortiori no past painful events. Presentists have thus argued that relief is appropriate only from their point of view and have appealed to this claim to back up their ontology. There are well-known anti-presentists strategies to counter this move. Nevertheless, one can still argue that the rejection of past painful events that comes with presentism makes this doctrine morally superior to non-presentists world views. If so, at least for those who think that the presentist vs. non-presentist dispute cannot be decided on purely theoretic grounds, or for those who endorse a theistic perspective, or at least believe in the ontological efficacy of values, there is a reason in favor of the truth of presentism.