Ethics After the Present: Responsibility and Moral Agency in a Two-Tier Temporal Ontology

Contemporary debates on the ontology of time often overlook their ethical ramifications. This paper introduces the ethical implications of Existential Realism (ER), a two-tier framework that distinguishes between what exists (the materially present) and what is real (including non-present but causally connected phenomena). We argue that standard presentism—holding that only the present exists—encourages a form of moral myopia, undervaluing future harms and past obligations. Conversely, eternalism’s block universe (where past, present, and future equally exist) risks a kind of moral fatalism, implying that future outcomes are fixed and beyond influence. In contrast, ER’s temporal ontology allows us to extend moral concern across time without positing that past or future entities exist in the same way present ones do. By affirming the reality of past and future (despite their lack of current existence), ER provides a coherent basis for caring about real-but-non-existent individuals and events. We develop an account of moral responsibility toward future persons and past injustices grounded in ER, and show how this approach illuminates real-world cases like climate ethics (responsibilities to future generations) and historical justice (acknowledging the reality of past harms). Briefly, we also consider implications for AI ethics and decision-making where long-term outcomes are at stake. Throughout, we demonstrate that a two-tier temporal ontology can integrate moral foresight and memory into a consistent framework, supporting intergenerational duties and a temporally expansive view of moral agency. We conclude by advocating a temporally grounded moral realism rooted in the ER framework, which reconciles the primacy of the present with the enduring moral significance of the past and future.