The Imperative of Responsibility

Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung, 1979 (English translation 1984)

When technical power reaches into the distant future, ethics must change scale: we become responsible for what we will never see.

Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.
Hans Jonas, the imperative of responsibility

What the text says

Older moralities, Jonas observes, were moralities of proximity: they governed our relations with those who share our time and place. Modern technology has broken that frame. Our acts now have cumulative, irreversible, planetary effects that reach generations not yet born.

Jonas therefore proposes a new imperative, and a method: the heuristics of fear. Since we know better what we reject than what we want, imagining the worst helps us know what must be protected. In grave decisions, the prophecy of doom should take precedence over the prophecy of bliss.

Why read it now

Written in the face of nuclear power and ecological crisis, the book seems to have been conceived for artificial intelligence: a power whose effects exceed our capacity to foresee them. One may dispute its caution. It is hard to ignore its question.

What remains open

How can we be responsible for consequences we cannot even imagine?