Technical imperative
Technical imperative is a term from ethics and philosophy . Based on the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant , it stands for a maxim that does not aim at what is ethically justifiable, but rather what is technically feasible: "Act in such a way that none of the technical options available to you remains unused."
origin
The term goes back to the German-born ethicist and philosopher Hans Jonas , who emigrated to London in 1933 and to Palestine in 1935 due to his Jewish origin . His 1979 work The Principle Responsibility - Attempting an Ethics for Technical Civilization , summarized again by himself in 1982 in the essay "Why technology is an object for ethics: five reasons" , serves as one of the foundations of the scientific discussion about the Contradiction between technical feasibility and ethical justifiability. The contradiction arises in particular from the fact that the technical approach aims more at the short-term solution of problems, while the ethical approach also takes into account the lasting effects of the action.
Examples
Areas in which this contradiction comes to light regularly and clearly are medicine, genetic engineering and nuclear engineering. Here it becomes clear that the rapidly advancing technological development has given people options for action and thus means of power, the effects and sustainability of which cannot be adequately dealt with with the terms of traditional philosophy and ethics.
medicine
The traditional self-image of a doctor calls for doing everything humanly possible to prolong life. At the same time, modern medical technology gives him the means to meet this requirement for an almost unlimited period of time. However, whether it is sensible and ethically justifiable in each individual case to unreservedly follow the technical imperative ( “Use everything that is available to you and run the full medical program” ) is the subject of many, in some cases extremely controversial, discussions.
Genetic engineering
The rapid progress in genetic engineering, for example, has pushed human cloning into the realm of what is technically possible. Here the technical imperative calls for using these newly created possibilities for therapeutic or research-related purposes, since from a purely technical point of view it would not be justifiable to forego the immediate and timely advantages that such an approach would bring.
Nuclear technology
The civil use of nuclear energy is one of the clearest examples of the effects of the technical imperative: Here, progress has given people a technical ability (the almost unlimited generation of electrical energy) which, on the one hand, is an acutely pressing problem (the constantly increasing Demand for electrical energy) is able to solve, but on the other hand creates further problems for the future that contradict the future ethical principle of sustainability. The technical imperative is increasingly in competition with the ethical imperative .
source
- Hans Jonas: The principle of responsibility: Attempting ethics for technological civilization. Frankfurt / M., 1979. New edition as Suhrkamp paperback, 1984 [u.ö.], ISBN 3-518-39992-6 There are English and French translations.