Future ethics

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The ethics of the future has the accountability of action ( ethics , morals ) in terms of their consequences, especially for future generations to content and deals so far specifically with issues that long-term and not readily foreseeable consequences for humans , society and nature have. In this sense, ecology , medicine , genetic engineering , but also economic or political action (see also globalization ) are increasingly confronted with future ethical issues. After the Chernobyl disaster , for example, the responsibility for the use of atomic energy and technology assessment were (and still is) intensively discussed.

Representative

A prominent representative of the ethics of the future was Hans Jonas , who in his main work " The Principle of Responsibility - Attempting an Ethics for Technological Civilization" (1979) examined the responsibility of human actions in nature and technology from an ethical and moral point of view.

Based on Immanuel Kant , Jonas formulated his categorical imperative: "Act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of real human life on earth. "

With this, Jonas declares the "care for the being" of the human being to be an ontological duty. It is not about condemning modern technologies - Jonas saw them as the work of the creative freedom of modern man. In particular, it is the "responsibility for what is to be done" that Jonas has in mind in his ethics of the future:

" I am responsible for my act as such (as well as for its omission), regardless of whether there is someone who - now or later - holds me accountable. Responsibility therefore exists with or without God, and of course without it an earthly court of justice. Nevertheless, except for something, it is the responsibility before something - an obligatory authority to be given accountability. This obligatory authority, it is said, if one no longer believes in a divine one, is conscience . "

See also

literature