We can, but should we? Or the duty of power according to Hans Jonas

Abstract

Hans Jonas offers us a philosophical analysis that sheds light on the unbridled mode of modern technological development. For him, modern technique is an ambiguous, collective, cumulative and temporally broad way of acting, therefore, it can no longer enjoy the moral neutrality of which the olden interaction of technique with matter was part. But the scientific enlightenment moves precisely in this equivocal direction of neutralizing nature (and man) from the aspect of value, making it an object always available to the present interest. Therefore, faced with the dilemma imposed between “power and duty” involved in the development of new technologies, we propose a reading of the principle of responsibility, replacing the power as a key concept to characterize responsibility in the thinking of Hans Jonas as an ethical principle applicable in political sphere.