If we look carefully at this rule of Kant...

If we look carefully at this rule of Kant, then we find the following: Can Can Not Contradiction or No contradiction This is based on a famous law in Aristotelian logic called the law of non-contradiction: A can not be true and false at the same time. You can’t “will” stealing and preserve its opposite (legal property) at the same time, you can not negate property by stealing and preserve it at the same time. This is contradictory, because A can not be true and false at the same time.

Thus, as Jonas noted Kant’s ethics is not about moral dimensions, it is about logical compatibility.7 There was always an attempt to build ethics on Logic, such as Kant’s attempt, or build it on geometry such as that of Spinoza, Ethics based geometrical method, or on calculus, such as the attempt of Bentham and Mill to measure pleasure.

I think that all these attempts of seeking consistency are of no use in ethics because consistency is a standard of empty systems in pure mathematics where there is no relation to reality. While in applied physics a theory has to be related to facts. In ethics, values are related to human actions and how to control the desires of the human soul, so we are not talking about consistency rather about commitment, responsibility, sacrifice, and moderation.

Also how to act in way that is not harmful to the present and the future condition of humanity. Jonas tried to modify Kant’s principle to be: “Act so that the effect of your actions is compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.” Or “In your present choices, include the future wholeness of Man among the objects of your will.”8 Jonas believes that if you look at his principle from the traditional approach you will immediately see that there is no rational contradiction involved if you violate this kind of imperative; it is possible to “will”the present good while sacrificing the future good of humanity, but most importantly in this imperative is that the new imperative “says precisely that we may risk our own life-but not that of humanity…that we do not have the right to choose, or even risk, nonexistence for future generations on account of a better life for the present one.”9 If you raise the question why we have such an obligation toward generations that do not even yet exist?

Jonas has no answer, but he left a good hint in saying: “To underpin this proposition theoretically is by no means easy and without religion perhaps impossible.