Hoover Tuesdays by  Fernanda Diab (Universidad de la República Oriental del Uruguay)

Scholars have identified inheritance transfers as playing a significant part in wealth accumulation and the rise of inequality in contemporary societies. However, their widespread acceptance as a social institution, along with the economic interests that have emerged around them —such as the trend toward the abolition of inheritance tax— give rise to an axiological tension that must be addressed when approaching the issue philosophically. My research aims to contribute to revealing the normative implications of hereditary transmission, acknowledging this tension and supplementing critiques based on distributive justice with a critique framed in terms of domination. It seeks to argue that the ideal of freedom as non-domination, primarily addressed within democratic republicanism, expands the critical potential for evaluating inheritance by delving into the problem of property and its connection to the access to the goods necessary to achieve economic independence and, consequently, political equality. 
These two principles are indispensable values for the construction and legitimacy of democracy. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that the inheritance of property is a politically unresolved problem, the solution of which cannot be considered in isolation from a conception of fiduciary property. 
One of the main contributions intended is to frame the treatment of the right to inheritance as a problem of intergenerational justice, meaning its study must be projected toward its effects on remote generations. The social and political thought of Carlos Vaz Ferreira (1872-1958) serves as a precursor to this postulate and will therefore be considered as such. The Uruguayan philosopher not only offers methodological guidelines for addressing inheritance as a normative problem, but also justifies its limitation based on the harmful effects on the living conditions of future generations. On this occasion I discuss the relationship between private inheritance, intergenerational duties and the fiduciary conception of property.