Tag: Hans Jonas

Kant’s categorical imperative said: “Act so that you can will that the maxim of your action be made the principle of a universal law.” The “can” here invoked is that of reason and its consistency with itself: Given the existence of a community of human agents (acting rational beings), the action must be such that…

Returning to strictly intra-human considerations, there is another ethical aspect to the growth of techne as a pursuit beyond the pragmatically limited terms of former times. Then, so we found, techne was a measured tribute to necessity, not the road to mankind’s chosen goal — a means with a finite measure of adequacy to well-defined…

All this has decisively changed. Modern technology has introduced actions of such novel scale, objects, and consequences that the framework of former ethics can no longer contain them. The Antigone chorus on the demotes, the wondrous power, of man would have to read differently now; and its admonition to the individual to honor the laws…

It follows that the knowledge that is required — besides the moral will — to assure the morality of action, fitted these limited terms: it was not the knowledge of the scientist or the expert, but knowledge of a kind readily available to all men of good will. Kant went so far as to say…

Let us extract from the preceding those characteristics of human action which are relevant for a comparison with the state of things today. 1. All dealing with the non-human world, i.e., the whole realm of techne (with the exception of medicine), was ethically neutral – in respect both of the object and the subject of…

The novel powers I have in mind are, of course, those of modern technology. My first point, accordingly, is to ask how this technology affects the nature of our acting, in what ways it makes acting under its dominion different from what it has been through the ages. Since throughout those ages man was never…