Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas was an illustrious philosopher. His work was focused on the ethical and social issues created by technology.

Jonas insists that human survival depends on our efforts to take care of our planet and its future. He formulates a new supreme moral principle: “Acting in such a way as the effects of your act are compatibles with the permanence of a genuine human life”.

To begin with, in his book on ethics of technology (Jonas, 1995), the philosopher states:

“Modern technology, informed by an ever deeper penetra-tion of nature and propelled by the forces of market and politics,

has enhanced human power beyond anything known or even dreamed of before. It is a power over matter, over life on earth, and over man himself; and it keeps growing at an accelerating pace. Its unfettered exercise for about two centuries has raised the material estate of its wielders and main beneficiaries, the industrial ‘West,’ to heights equally unknown in the history of mankind. But lately, the other side of the triumphal advance has begun to show its face, disturbing the euphoria of success with threats that are as novel as its welcomed fruits, the peaceful and constructive use of worldwide technological power, a use in which all of us are collaborators as captive beneficiaries through rising production, consumption and sheer population growth - that poses threats much harder to counter. The net total of these threats is the overtaxing of nature, environmental and (perhaps) human as well. Thresholds may be reached in one direction or another, points of no return, where processes initiated by us will run away from us on their own momentum and toward disaster.”

Technology often begins with a near-term and often short-sighted response to human needs. And, while it addresses the immediate needs, it often causes long-term consequences that are deleterious, for instance, this is most evident in the state of the natural environment and in the rise of human chronic diseases.

So it becomes necessary to predict and avoid the consequences by wiser design and use of technology through the mobilization of the social and environmental conscience.

The huge development of technology is not only very ben-eficial for human life quality, but it is also full of uncertainty.

We don’t know with accuracy what the potential side effects of its massive implementation could be. Thus today we have the obligation of care in order to ensure that technology doesn’t harm the natural environment, the physical means where life is possible, in an irrecoverable way. So the conservation of nature is only feasible through the rational use of natural resources and, consequently, through strict controls of the use and development

of technology. In this sense, we are talking about man’s responsi-bility with regard to nature conservation.

This responsibility for nature is present in Jonas’s “principle of responsibility”. In this work Jonas formulates an ethics for the future and he presents a particular moral imperative. This imper-ative establishes as an essential duty a collective behavior of the humankind for man’s future that claims an ethical order distin-guished by calm, prudence and equilibrium and, at the same time, there is a duty for the future of nature, the environment where human existence is possible. That is why the human subject has to assume responsibility in order to protect and safeguard this.

Therefore, the professional practice of engineering has to demand this responsibility related to the technological power that man has achieved because it puts the continuation or the abolition of human life in our hands and, in general, that of all the living creatures on our planet. Such responsibility, in return for the freedom and power that we have now, has to be based on prudence, a desirable typical feature of the engineer’s profile mentioned in Chapter 2, section 2. In this sense, as professionals we should take the commitment to refrain from actions than can threaten the maintenance of human life for the next generations.

Finally and in the same line of the preceding figure, Jacques Ellul, Jonas proposes the practice of a “heuristics of fear” that would always consider the worst-case scenarios before under-taking any technological project. These kinds of reflections and practices are necessary among the future professionals in order to develop a criterion to discern whether to refuse to start the development of any modern technology.

1.14. Aristotle

Virtue ethics, stemming largely from the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, has been enjoying a revival in ethics discourse in the past few years (Grodzinsky, 1999; Aiken and Epstein, 2000;

Moriarty, 2001). Though increasingly relevant to contemporary engineering practice, virtue ethics provides an essential measure for gauging the character of the traditional engineer.

Aristotle believed that the purpose of human existence is to achieve a state of “eudaemonia”. Eudaemonia is a difficult word to translate. One way to translate it is “happiness” but this is too superficial. We think that a closer approximation could be

“flourishing” or leading a worthwhile life. This means a person flourishes and leads a good life when she fulfills the purpose of human beings. In order to flourish, to be eudaemon, a person will possess virtues and exercise them with practical wisdom (ration-ality) in order to make good choices in acting well. The virtues will become integral to her character and so become part of her flourishing, not just a means to an end. So the virtues benefit the possessor as they become so deeply entrenched in a person’s character that she deeply desires to be better.

We want to emphasize that the character is developed over a long period of time and requires the practice of the virtues.

Aristotle describes virtue as a practice or habit, something that is learned through doing.

So, from our view point, virtue ethics might suggest the prac-tice of virtues to distinguish the engineer as a person of integ-rity. The habituation of virtuous action, done to learn virtue, enhances the good tendencies and discourages the negative ones within a person. It is a method for developing moral character that, as educators, we should show to our future engineers within the training process when they are learning to face the ethical issues of their profession. Through virtue ethics, the moral agent, the engineer, can reflect upon and choose the virtuous action knowingly and for its own sake. It is not enough to act justly by accident or because it is standard practice. The future engineers should learn to act justly because that is the right/virtuous way to improve themselves as professionals and because the concept of ethics demands an understanding of the society in which it

oper-ates and, simultaneously, in which the engineers act, too. Virtue operates to achieve the good internal to common social practices, one of the most important goals of the engineering profession.