ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Modern Technology, Preventive Ethics, and the Human Condition: ETHICS OF RESPONSIBILITY In this section I will focus on the importance of responsibility as a central theme in any moral philosophy that needs to handle modern technology properly.

Jonas thinks that our progress in technology, and dealing with nature without the ethics of responsibility is an act against the future of mankind, in this technological progress, Jonas asks: “What kind of obligation is operative in it?” Is it Utilitarian or just a command that we should not “saw off the branch on which we sit?”5 but the “we” here is not necessarily the present condition of man kind, it is most likely the future generations who will pay the price; since the human good known in its generality is the same for all time, its complete locus is always the present.

Modern technology brought us not to the end but to the edge of our fate and unless we have a good vision about where we are going, then we will neither be able to save ourselves nor our future generations. This new vision has to be equipped with practical philosophy and wisdom; it has to be different from the previous traditional moral philosophy. Because with modern technology, new issues have appeared such as: global conditions, environmental issues, cloning, and genetic engineering.

All these issues were not part of the traditional ethical theories such as those of deontological ethics, utilitarianism, and the ethics of virtue.

Jonas rightly commented that “previous ethics and metaphysics provided not even the principles, let alone a ready doctrine”6 for such issues that are essentially related to the future of humanity, most of these moral theories are at their best ethics of the “here and now” let’s take Kant’s categorical imperative, as an example: “Act so that you can will that the maxim of our action be made the principle of a universal law.” If we look at this rule, which is also called the rule of universalization, it justifies an act as morally right if the act can be universalized with no contradiction, take for example theft to the maxim or universalize it that every one is stealing from everyone else, what is wrong with that?

Well, it contradicts the concept of personal property; therefore stealing is immoral because it causes contradiction on this maxim level.