Hans Jonas's Ethic of Responsibility: From Ontology to Ecology

5 Technology, Nature, and Ethics

5 Technology, Nature, and Ethics I am of the opinion that philosophy must work out a new theory of being in which the position of human beings in the cosmos and their relationship to nature are of central concern. Utopian thinking in the future would then focus on making peace between human beings and nature . . . It’s a question of educating people so that they will adopt a less greedy and wasteful way of life but perhaps one that is more demanding in other regards. . . . But the last thing we should permit ourselves is to give up. —Hans Jonas, “Closer to the Bitter End” 1. Introduction The subtitle to The Imperative of Responsibility is In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, reflecting Jonas’s claim that modern technology has fundamentally changed the scope and extent of human action, necessitating a new ethical understanding and approach. In an essay titled “Technology as a Subject for Ethics,” he states that technology is subject to ethical consideration because “technology is an exercise of human power, that is, a form of action, and all human action is answerable to moral scrutiny.”1 It is a search because it is still unclear where our technology is leading us and what its risks or limits might be. In other words, technology itself is evolving and resists a clear definition, a situation that hinders our capacity to articulate an ethical stance in response. The issue is further confused by the fact that technology usually carries in its wake new and unforeseen problems that technology is then required to “fix.”2 Our faith in technology and progress encourages us to assume that technology can fix problems generated by our use of technology and that all that is needed is more or better technology.3 143 144 Hans Jonas’s Philosophy of Responsibility Jonas argues that one of our principle problems is “that every constructive solution requires a massive infusion of technology . . . and the wounds thereby inflicted on the environment demand further technical progress for their healing. . . . The here reigning dialectics of a progress which, in providing solutions for the problems it has created, must create new ones and thus becomes its own compulsion, is a core problem of the ethic of responsibility for the future of which we are in quest” (IR, 84). At the base of the issue is the fact that our theoretical perspective directs our involvement with nature and technology; it creates the conditions for continual technological innovations and for acceptance of their accompanying risks and negative ecological side effects. Science and technology interact in a mutual feedback system, as science discloses “nature” as raw material and forces governed by universal laws, rather than as an ecosystem that is complex and fragile.4 Thus, we seem trapped within the framework of a scientific-technological mind-set that keeps us from thinking differently about how we might approach our problems, indeed, from thinking how we might live differently. It is important to note that technology often produces products that we find helpful and conducive to enhanced human lives. The union of technology and science has made the human condition better in several ways, improving health and quality of life and enhancing freedom in many respects. Any attempt to critique technology as a whole risks being condemned as Luddism. And yet, as Jonas points out, “the quandary is this: not only when malevolently misused, namely, for evil ends, but even when benevolently used for its proper and most justifiable ends, does technology have a threatening side to it which may have the last word in the long run of things.”5 Technology is therefore not neutral; it is inherently ambivalent. It seems necessary to specify exactly what Jonas means by technology and to elucidate in some detail his concerns about the particular technologies he sees as threatening and in need of an ethical response. He begins with the realization that human beings are technological beings, that is, they are makers of tools and objects created out of the natural resources they find around them. He says, “[M]an is the maker of his life qua human, bending circumstances to his will.”6 Technology is as old as human existence, but, as Jonas points out, the technologies of old never significantly disturbed the balance of nature. Humans were not capable until recently of actively damaging the natural world with their technologies. At this point in time, humanity follows where technological development leads; enamored of, and blinded...