Abstract
Hans Jonas proposes "Future-oriented" ethics in his writings : "Das Prinzipi Verantwortung" and "Technik, Medin und Ethik". It is "a commensurate ethic of foresight and responsibility " and in this ethical theory the concept of "responsibility" is central. According to these ethics the categorical imperative is as follows: "Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life"; that is, act so that mankind may exist. Now I analyze these writings and intend to make clear the principle of these ethics. Firstly, I analyze why such an imperative is enjoined, in relation to a problem of modern technology. He insists that the nature of human action has changed with modern technology, and that ethics should change with its changed nature, since ethics is concerned with action. Secondly, I analyze his grounds for such an imperative. Wishing to found its rational ground, he takes a plunge into ontology and struggles to draw the ontological proof of the command: that Man should exist. The naked ontic fact of mankind's existence is the basis of a valid claim to being and "ought to be." Then, proceeding to its subjective and psychological ground, he finds the archetype of all responsibility in the parents of the child, for the parents are receptive to the child's appeal, which finds its response in their mind. It is the feeling of responsibility. As a result of these analyses three things are clear: (1) the concept of responsibility is not the empty and formal one of every agent being responsible for his acts but the substantive one which makes him responsible for the particular object that has a claim on his acting; (2) the ontology of responsibility is not that of eternity but of time, for every agent can be responsible only for the changeable and perishable; and (3) the ethics which may be erected on the principle of responsibility must not remain bound to anthropocentrism.
