ABSTRACT
The position of surviving duties is compatible with presupposition. The duties survive the death of the bearer of the right. While the bearer of the right does no longer exist, living people can stand under the correlative duties. For bring about the public acknowledgment of past people as victims of historical injustice can require different measures under different circumstances. Living people can express their acknowledgment of past people as victims of past wrongs in an indirect way, namely, by providing measures of compensation for those who are worse off than they should be owing to the effects of the past injustices suffered by their predecessors. This chapter presents the interpretation of symbolic compensation as a response to an objection to the forward-looking understanding of the significance of historical injustices. According to the forward-looking interpretation past injustices matter only and insofar as they have an impact on the well-being people.
