Aristotelian Perspectives For Post-modern Reason (i)

Prudence and Environmental Responsibility: ‘May human life remain possible.’

Hans Jonas’ environmental ethics are clearly set in a post-modern attitude as he rejects some clear dogmas of Modern Age, for example that which says that there are no metaphysical truths or that which states that there is no way from the ‘is’ to the ‘ought’. But he is not postmodern, rather he isactual , combining intellectual modesty and mistrust in certainty with the quest for an objective basis; he explicitly renounces the utopian outlook, he does not identify science with reason but develops criteria of judgement independent of techno-science precisely in order to judge its applications.

Many of these features bring the environmental ethics of Jonas nearer to the ideas we have been setting out. Their principle of responsibility corresponds clearly to Peirce’s maxim of not blocking the way of inquiry, and both suggest the same concept of rationality. Furthermore, Jonas explicitly recognizes his Aristotelian leanings in his writing, so his concepts may fairly easily be linked with those of Aristotle.

In what follows I shall attempt to relate Jonas’ responsibility principle with the Aristotelian notion of prudence and with Peirce’s maxim. At the same time I shall highlight the link between scientific rationality as Peirce understands it and environmental responsibility as Jonas sets it out[^68] . The ideas of both men, and with them the new rationality that they suggest, are reinforced when seen against a background of ontology and anthropology of Aristotelian inspiration.

Hans Jonas’ responsibility principle, in one of its formulations, states: ‘Behave in such a way that you do not endanger the conditions for mankind’s indefinite stay on Earth.’ It is a principle of respect and care for life in general and of human life in particular, is born from an attitude of intellectual modesty and of the recognition that while our capacity for foresight has grown, it has grown much less than our scope for acting on the environment. Furthermore, the information we obtain ends up being released to the general public and constitutes in itself a causal factor. This feedback loop makes the future dynamics of society and nature even more unpredictable. Nature, too, for it has fallen under mankind’s power and depends to a great extent on our knowledge, on our decisions, and in general on the progress of human society.

The ethics of responsibility is an uncertain one, one which has given up certainty in favour of respect for reality, which accepts the inescapable risk of action, so much so that the fear of that risk is in part what serves it as a prudential guide (heuristic of fear ). It is indeed this fallibilistic attitude that will lead to a demand for a constant openness to the future. Jonas’ texts in this regard are perfectly clear:

‘The one paradoxical certainty here is that of uncertainty.’[^69]

‘We know, if nothing else, that most of these will be changed. It is the difference between a static and a dynamic situation. Dynamism is the signature of modernity. It is not an accident, but an immanent property of the epoch, and until further notice it is our fate. It bespeaks the fact that we must always figure on novelty without ever being able to figure it out; that change is certain, but not what the changed condition will be ‘[^70] .

Of the politician he says:

‘For no general rule of ethics can make it a duty, on the mere criterion of subjective certainty, to risk committing possibly fatal mistakes at others’ expense. Rather must he who wagers on his own certainty take the never excludable possibility of being in error upon his own conscience. For this, there exists no general law, only the free deed, which in the unassuredness of its eventual justification (even in the mere presumption of its self-confidence, which surely cannot be part of any moral prescription) is entirely its own venture.’[^71] .

All Statesmanship Is Responsible for the Possibility of Future Statesmanship * * [...] Nonetheless – remembering what we have said before – even the most skeptical estimate of historical prognosis leaves at least one basic certainty, itself a prognosis, that political spontaneity will remain necessary at all times, precisely because the excessively intricate web of events will, in principle, never conform to plan[^72] .

‘We contend that to build upon this certainty [...] is at least as irresponsible as was [...] to rely on the uncertain. [...] From all of this it follows that, while today there is as little a recipe for statecraft as there ever was, the time spans of responsibility as well as of informed planning have widened unprecedentedly’.[^73]

Jonas does not believe for a minute that his ethics alone can bring about complete good, but, aware of his limits, he merely seeks to protects the conditions of freedom, of happiness and the future assuming of responsibilities, in the same way as prudence, rather than squarely producing practical truth, protects and cultivates the conditions for its appearance, in the same way that Peirce recommends as the ultimate maxim of reason, as a more universal and peremptory norm of the method, to look after the conditions of free research and not to block the way of inquiry. The ethics of responsibility is then far from any utopian idea:

‘But no less should one distrust those who pretend to know about a future destination of their own or every society, about a goal of history, for which all of the past was but a preparation and the present is only a transitional stage. ‘[^74]

‘But in believing to know the direction and the goal, Marxism is still heir to the Kantian regulative idea, which is stripped of its infinitude and wholly transposed into the finite [...] We post-Marxists (a word still sounding audacious[^75] and certainly mistaken to many) must see things differently.’[^76]

In short, the rational attitude consists above all in a protection and stimulus of creative capacities which will allow future adjustment to conditions that we cannot foresee:

‘[...] the spontaneity orfreedom of the life in question – the greatest of all unknowns, which yet must be included in the total responsibility. [...] It can be so in one way only: respecting this transcendent horizon, the intent of the responsibility must be not so much to determine as to enable, that is, to prepare and keep the capacity for itself in those to come intact, never foreclosing the future exercise of responsibility by them. The object’s self-owned futurity is the truest futural aspect of the responsibility, [...] In the light of such self-transcending width, it becomes apparent that responsibility as such is nothing else but the moral complement to the ontological constitution ourtemporality .’[^77]

‘We omit here what lies beyond these duties of guarding and preserving: obligations to ends which none other than he firstcreates as it were out of nothing. For creativity lies outside the tasks of responsibility, which extends no further than to making it possible, that is, to keeping intact its ontological premise, the being of man is such. This is its more modest, but more stringent duty.’[^78]

On the other hand, Hans Jonas’ responsibility ethic is totally realistic, seeking its basis in the object, which will be the object of responsibility, in the good that resides in being (‘anontic paradigm’[^79] ). It seeks an objective basis in the demands for care and respect, an objective basis even for the subjective feeling of responsibility. We feel responsibility towards living things and this feeling is correct insofar as such living things have a value in themselves, inasmuch as they are objectively valuable and would be even without our recognition of that value and without our feeling of responsibility. ‘What matters,’ he states, ‘are things rather than states of my will.’[^80] Which is tantamount to saying that what has value is truth, and not so much subjective states (like certainty). To sum up: ‘ The objectivity must really stem from the object.’[^81]

But objective good is basically a possibility which requires realization, actualizing, for which the contribution of the responsible subject is required. The paradigm of this situation is the child, a fragile existence which requires care to continue existing, which is like demanding to be more, and that demand is directed to the responsible subject, who has to protect and provide for the full realization of his possibilities.

‘Not duty itself is the object: not the moral law motivates moral action, but the appeal of a possible good-in-itself in the world, which confronts my will and demands to be heard –in accordance with the moral law. To grant that appeal a hearingis precisely what the moral law commands: this law is nothing but the general enjoinder of the call of all action-dependent ‘goods’ and of their situation-determinedright to justmy action’[^82] .

The ethics of responsibility eschews the universal norm, formal duty, as it does action for action’s sake, full subjectivity. In this regard, it is again close to the Aristotelian balances between abstract formalism and pure arbitrariness. Its realist foundation makes it insecure, not subject to strict formal norms, but it also makes it objective, not subjected to whim, in the same way that prudence too is neither law nor whim, but a norm incarnate, responsibility culminates not in a rule for the conservation of the environment but in the responsible being who recognizes the otherness of the object of his responsibility and at the same time his openness to possibilities that will come into existence with his help. In this Jonas differs from the most typical extremes of modernity, whose paradigmatic exponents could have been Kant and Nietzsche. the concrete character of responsibility permits - or rather demands - the integration of intellect and sentiment (‘hence choice is either desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of action is a man’[^83] ):

‘A theory of responsibility, as any ethical theory, must deal both with the rational ground of obligation, that is, the validating principle behind the claim to a binding ‘ought,’ and with thepsychological ground of its moving the will, that is, of an agent’s letting it determine his course of action. This is to say that ethics has an objective side and a subjective side, the one having to do with reason, the other with emotion.’[^84]

‘Existentialism is the modern extreme of this ethics of subjective intention (cf. Nietzsche’s ‘wil to will,’ Sartre’s ‘authentic decision,’ Heidegger’s ‘resoluteness,’ etc.), where the worldly issue is not by itself endowed with a claim on us but receives its significance from the choice of our passionate concern. Here the self-committing freedom of the self reigns supreme.’[^85]

In opposition to Kantian ethics, Jonas confirms that ‘[But] the good is the ‘cause’ at issue out there in the world [...] Morality can never have itself for its goal’[^86] . Jonas recognizes that Kantian morals also appeal to sentiment, but ‘What is unique is that this feeling is directed not at a material object but at the law itself[^87] .’

Still other features of responsibility may be added to confer continuity with Aristotelian prudence, for example, the temporary and contingent character of its object and the global nature of its perspective which covers the object of its care completely:

‘[...]the object ofresponsibility is emphatically the perishablequa perishable’[^88] .

‘The child as a whole and in all its possibilities, not only in its immediate needs, is its [parental responsibility’s] object.’[^89] .

The paradigmatic examples of responsibility, that of parents and children, that of the politician and the public weal, tell us just how far this is so. The parent cannot, and must not, make his son his own creation, he cannot bring him happiness in his hands, but he must protect and ensure the conditions for it, among which are the child’s freedom and spontaneity. Nor can society and each of its members expect everything from the politician, but they can expect him to stimulate and protect the conditions in which everything is possible, those in which active members of society can work for the public weal and individual happiness. Jonas’s responsibility and Aristotle’s prudence, look to the common good, but they are not methods for its effective production, for there is no method for it, for it is produced in an ever-new world, in an ever-new subject, and they are rather generators and protectors of the conditions for global good, in an uncertain but habitable world.