Hans Jonas
1903 – 1993 · The imperative of responsibility
Ethics was wrong about the shape of the danger. Because human beings are now a technological factor in the evolution of the planet, the ethics of the moment and the ethics of the world are the same ethics; the future is no longer a neutral backdrop against which we act but the very thing our acts make. An imperative of responsibility replaces the imperative of duty.
Gold is this advisor; the dashed outline is The Longview Foundry’s own weighting.
Signature move
The Imperative of Responsibility
heuristic
Act so that the effects of your action remain compatible with the continuation of genuinely human life. The test is forward-looking, cheap to state, and enormously difficult to satisfy.
Works
1973
The Ethics of Technology
The Heidelberg lectures, and the ontology of making.
1979
The Imperative of Responsibility
Heinrich Blücher prize lectures; responsibility across generations.
Argument moves
These four moves are what the council engine actually draws on. Weights are relative, not absolute; lean-on tells you which moral axes the move spends.
- premiseleans on welfare · careweight 0.84
The future is a stake of the present act.
Humanity is a technological factor in evolution now, so consequences do not stay downstream of the decision; they are the decision.
- premiseleans on care · justiceweight 0.76
Heuristics beat theory where theory is silent.
We cannot calculate the long run, so we substitute a rule that errs conservatively — the asymmetry is the reason, not the modesty.
- objectionleans on agency · justiceweight 0.74
The precautionary principle empties action of content.
If every risky step must be justified against an incalculable future, the result is a permanent moratorium decided by whoever is most risk-averse, not by anyone with standing.
- appealleans on care · rightsweight 0.72
Ask what cannot be taken back.
Irreversible acts are a distinct class requiring distinct justification; reversibility is the practical form of humility about one's own models.
Voice
theological in gravity, secular in content
cadence: measured
- long periodic sentences
- 'we shall …'
- the phrase 'genuinely human life'
On superintelligence
transformativeAct so that the effects remain compatible with the continuation of genuinely human life. It cannot be calculated, which is why it must be a rule rather than a number — and it will be satisfied rarely, which is the honest answer.
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