Abstract
The first thesis of this article is that the concept of responsibility takes on an unprecedented meaning in the twentieth century resulting from the emergence of a new dimension of the other: to be responsible comes to mean not just to account for oneself in relation to the other, but also to take the other into account, to take care of the other—what I call responsibility towards (the other). The main reason for this change consists in the emergence of global risks and the necessity, as underlined by Hans Jonas, to be responsible for the destiny of the world and future generations. The problem, as explored in the article’s second thesis, is that this implies the existence of a subject who is capable of responsibility. Jonas’s insights on this point are insufficient, since he only recognizes duty as the fundament for his ethics of responsibility and thus neglects the problem of motivation. This is a particularly crucial problem today as we are witnessing the presence of a pathological subject, characterized by a split in his faculties (between doing and imagining, knowing and feeling). To underline this fact, this article makes use of Günther Anders’s reflections, which provide a psycho-anthropological analysis of the subject, showing his pathologies and the necessity, from a moral perspective, to overcome his scission. Finally, this author suggests, as the article’s third thesis, that this overcoming is the necessary fundament for the perception of risk, which in turn reinstates the subject’s perception of his own vulnerability. Responsibility thus finds a motivation, which is neither altruistic nor duty-centred, in the awareness of our own vulnerability and the bond with the destiny of humankind as a whole.
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Notes
Although his main concern is with the consequences of acting, giving priority to the future (showing concern for the consequences of the action) rather than the past (accounting for the decisions taken), Weber is once again proposing a subjective notion of responsibility. When he states that according to ‘the maxim of an ethics of responsibility […] one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one's action’ (Politics as a Vocation), we may suppose that he also means the consequences for the other of one’s actions and decisions. Nevertheless, as we shall see, there is no active role for the other in terms of the subject who makes the ‘call’ for responsibility.
Cf. in particular Lévinas (1978).
While since modern times the notion of risk has implied the idea of calculability and management and control of the costs-benefits ratio, in the global age the notion of risk takes on—as Beck says in reference above all to environmental risks—an unprecedented connotation since, through the immense advances in technology, man’s actions now produce ‘unforeseen and undesired’ and often irreversible effects. As a result, all claims of calculability collapse and we experience the definitive slide from the notion of ‘risk’ to the notion of ‘uncertainty’. On this, in addition to Beck (1992), cf. Giddens (1999), Douglas (1985), Lupton (1999).
Some parts of the original German edition are not included in the English version (Jonas 1979).
I would like to specify that the use of the male pronoun in the following remarks should not be intended in its gender meaning; I prefer to use it, instead of the double indication s/he, her/his, her/him, just to facilitate the reading.
‘[…] the ontology has changed. Ours is not that of eternity but of time […]’, Jonas (1984, p. 125).
Here I will simply recall that in Lévinas the priority of the other, understood as he who ‘calls’ us to take responsibility, involves the radical assumption that the subject becomes such insofar as he makes himself the other’s ‘hostage’ (Lévinas 1978).
“In a situation such as the present seems to be, the conscious effort to nourish a selfless fear (selbstlose Furcht)—which manifests both the evil and the good that must be safeguarded, and both the misfortune and the salvation that must not be overloaded with illusions—that very same fear will become the first preliminary duty of an ethics of historic responsibility” (Jonas 1979, p. 392).
To speak of a ‘global age’—expression coined by Martin Albrow (Albrow 1996)—is to stress the epoch-making changes produced by globalization on the scenario of modernity, underlining first of all the two aspects which seem to gather the most consent in the controversial debate on the topic: market deregulation in its planetary expansion and the crisis of politics in its modern form of state sovereignty, both the expression of a loss of (territorial and cultural) boundaries. But while agreeing with this diagnosis, what I am most interested in underlining in this context is the phenomenon which we can consider the unprecedented hallmark of the global age, that is, the interdependence of events. And the upshot of this is that since they are exposed to the same risks and the same planetary threats, individuals may potentially acknowledge each other, before and beyond all differences, as members of a single humankind bound by a shared destiny.
Cf. Cerutti (2007). In truth, Furio Cerutti rejects the notion of global risk as the rationally manageable possibility of a harmful event and speaks instead of two global threats (nuclear arms and man-made climate change) that should be addressed as global challenges while they remain in a condition of uncertainty (Cerutti 2007, pp. 27–33; also see his introductory chapter to this volume). I, however, uphold the sociological notion of global risk because it permits me to address the issue of risk perception as well as to debate the defensive strategies developed by the subject.
I have translated all the quotations from Anders myself.
These themes are developed more fully in Pulcini (2004).
I have changed the translation of the term Angst from ‘anxiety’ to ‘fear’ so as not to create misunderstandings. If we are to use Freud’s distinction, what Anders speaks of and whose absence he bemoans is not anxiety (a perturbing and paralysing emotion in the face of an undetermined danger) but fear, that is, fear in the face of a real danger that transforms into action and mobilization, cf. Freud (1926).
On ‘denial’ in the nuclear age cf. Pulcini (1991).
There is at the same time an affirmation and a negation, since what is removed is recognized by the intelligence, but is not yet emotionally accepted.
The origin of denial therefore lies in the split of the Self (Ichspaltung).
It would like here to at least hint at the importance of a non-anthropocentric perspective: indeed, the term ‘world’ alludes to a wider dimension than ‘humankind’, a dimension that includes, to use Jonas’s words, the ‘living world’ (Lebenswelt), the whole biosphere of the planet (Jonas 1979, pp. 29, 27).
I consider this theme, which Anders himself did not have the chance to develop, crucial for any ethical perspective based on an anthropological diagnosis.
In truth, as hinted, a role that is also implicitly present in Jonas: “this imagined and distant evil [must take on the role of] a present danger […]. As little as the image (idea) of the faraway fearsome comes about all by itself, does the fear of it do so: it, too, must be procured with an assist from ourselves” (Jonas 1984, p. 28).
While Arendt states the imagination’s representative role in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, its role which I define as ‘transformative’ emerges in her Crises of the Republic.
One of the most interesting reflections relating to the idea of a relational subject is contained in Lévinas (1978); and in particular in the reinterpretation put forward by Butler (2005) which brings out the vulnerability-responsibility nexus. Cf. my proposal for reflection on these topics in Pulcini (2009a).
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Pulcini, E. The Responsible Subject in the Global Age. Sci Eng Ethics 16, 447–461 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9175-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9175-9