In his essay "Karl Jaspers on the Atomic Bomb and Responsibility," Mats Andrén argues that Karl Jaspers' nuclear ethics "ingeniously anticipated the increasing awareness of world responsibility of the 1970s and 1980s," when philosophers worldwide, confronted with the threat of climate change, recognized the need to extend the tempo-spatial limitations of traditional neighbor ethics. I will take a broader approach to the topic by addressing the fact that Günther Anders anticipated both the environmental ethics of the 1970s and 1980s—represented here by Hans Jonas—and Jaspers' nuclear ethics. I further explore whether the affinities among these thinkers are merely coincidental, a reflection of the prevailing Zeitgeist, or whether there is evidence that Jaspers or Jonas were influenced by Anders.
I begin by navigating through the different phases of Anders' negative anthropology, following the development of his ethical imperative in the nuclear age. This is followed by a discussion of Anders' possible influence on Jaspers' 1956 radio lecture, and Jonas' reflections on the new task of ethics in Philosophical Essays from 1974. In sum, the study demonstrates that the notion of global responsibility, already at its inception, evolves along at least two distinct trajectories.
Anders' philosophical writings can broadly be divided into two periods. In a lecture for the Kant Society in 1929, he takes the first steps toward what he would later designate as his "negative anthropology." Anders intimates that human beings are neither anchored in a specific world nor bound to a fixed mode of existence; unlike animals, they do not have a natural relationship to the world but, as individuated beings, find themselves always already estranged from it (WM 16).
Nearly a decade later, in "Pathology and Freedom," Anders draws two conclusions from this conjecture. Firstly, human beings are radically—in his own words, pathologically—free: both changeable and capable of changing the world. Struggling to overcome this ontological insecurity or metaphysical nihilism, they attempt to construct an essence that does not exist. This fabricated essence neither corresponds to the conditions of their existence nor alleviates the human sense of alienation from the world. Instead, it generates an even more inauthentic state of being. No matter what human beings do, the world remains an object to them, and this persistent inability—despite one's earnest efforts—to achieve unity with the world gives rise to a primordial, existential type of shame that is more profound than the shame of "having done this or that" (PF 287).
Secondly, Anders argues that any attempt to derive positive anthropological knowledge is doomed to fail, because humanity, in qualitative terms, lacks universal essential traits. Following thinkers such as Martin Heidegger and Ernst Bloch, Anders suggests that the defining feature of human beings lies in their capacity to orient themselves within a mutable world (PF 306-7). Notably, his interpretation diverges from Heidegger's in a crucial respect. In Heidegger's view, the radical freedom or contingency of Dasein grants humanity a distinctive mode of access to the world—unlike, for instance, the unfree, world-poor animal. Anders, by contrast, reverses the perspective by advancing the thesis that Dasein's contingency forms the basis of humanity's constant reification of the world, and as such, he regards it as the ultimate source of its worldlessness. In conclusion, by approaching humanity indirectly—through its object-oriented relation to the world—Anders arrives at the negative anthropological insight that the human being is simply not "cut out for the world." Anders writes:
He has but one formal a priori. He is not cut out for any material world, cannot anticipate it in its determination, and instead must learn to know it [connaître] "after the fact," a posteriori; he needs experience. His relation with a factual determination of the world is relatively weak, and he is in the awaiting of the possible and the indeterminate [le quelconque]. Likewise, no world is in fact imposed on him (as, for example, on every animal a specific milieu), and instead he transforms the world and builds over it according to a thousand historical variants and in a way as a superstructure; sometimes as a "second world," sometimes as another. For, to put it paradoxically, artificiality is the nature of man and his essence is instability. [PF 279]
Informed by the events of World War II, Anders' negative anthropology undergoes a shift. In his 1942 presentation for Adorno and Horkheimer's "Seminar on the Theory of Needs,"—and subsequent articles such as "The World as Phantom and as Matrix" and "Reflections on the H-Bomb," as well as the first section of Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, all of which are dated between 1955 and 1956—Anders places increasing emphasis on human interaction with new technologies. As a result of three stages of the Industrial Revolution characterized as (1) mechanization and mass production, (2) the artificial production of needs, and (3) the invention of the nuclear bomb, Anders asserts that the human being has become antiquated, both mentally and physically. Outperformed by machines, humans have become obsolete (AM1 6). These conditions introduce yet another dimension of existential shame: just as humans, according to the early Anders, feel ashamed of their inability to overcome alienation and their reification of the world, they now experience what he calls "Promethean shame"—a sense of failure to act as rationally and systematically as the technology they create and surround themselves with (AM1 23-6). Consequently, humans feel ashamed not only upon discovering the artifactual and artificial nature of their constructed ego, but also upon realizing that the ego is, in fact, a flawed self (AM1 24, 84).
Ultimately, the freedom of the human kind of being that is so characteristic of Anders' early thought is now being abolished: As a result of technification, human needs have exceeded the resources of the human world, and humankind has become enslaved to its products—most notably the atomic bomb (AM1 117, 272-6). In the earliest stages of civilization imagination exceeded human capabilities; today, by contrast, our ability to transform the world outpaces imagination. Accordingly, humans struggle to grasp the fact that their actions in the here and now have immediate effects on people across the globe—and on generations to come. Anders writes:
We call the fact that humans are becoming increasingly out of sync with the world of products they use, and the fact that this gap is widening day by day, "the Promethean differential." [AM1 16]
This Promethean differential (promethisches Gefälle) extends to a divergence between what humans can produce and what they can use, what they can do and what they can feel, between science and conscience, artifact and body, language and creation—and, as such, it results in a lapse in their moral capacities. In one of his later works, Anders proclaims that
the religious and philosophical ethics that have existed so far, have, without exception and in their entirety, become obsolete; they were exploded along with Hiroshima and co-gasified in Auschwitz.
If taken to the extreme, this development poses a threat to humanity's very existence. Surely, in Anders' view, alienation from the world is a core feature of human nature; yet the Promethean differential—conjured by excessive and irresponsible use of technological means—has produced a more radical form of estrangement than ever, while simultaneously luring humankind into a false sense of meaning and purpose, namely, the delusion of being like the machines. In this context, Konrad Liessmann argues that
Anders could postulate that in the technological era, a "categorical imperative" applied de facto determines the actual action of human beings more strongly than any moral law...Anders's basic thesis for an ethics appropriate to the age is thus that the "ought" has ultimately been taken from the human being by machines.
Ontologically considered, the fulfilment of this goal amounts to human extinction, as it culminates in the negation of the human essence. The human being may always be a man without world, argues Anders in one of his most famous quotes, which is inspired by Karl Marx—yet if humans are not proceeding carefully, they run the risk of creating a world without them:
It is not enough to change the world. We are doing this in any case. And on a global scale, this even happens without our intervention. What matters is interpreting this change. And to be precise, interpreting it in order to change it. So that the world may not continue to change without us. And so that it does not ultimately become a world without us.
Alongside the risk of ontological extinction, Anders is equally concerned with the physical extinction of mankind. He repeatedly cautions against political leaders worldwide who continue to risk the annihilation (Vernichtung) of humanity through nuclear disaster in pursuit of greater wealth and comfort. Anders characterizes these decision-makers as the "lords of the bomb" (AM1 296). He perceives their risk-taking as an expression of a fundamentally Western attitude that he coins "annihilism," that is, a combination of nihilism and annihilation (AM1 304), and he labels their ignorance as "Apocalypse-blindness" (AM1 293).
How, then, is one to confront this new situation? Anders refuses to accept that the lords of the bomb impose these terms. Implementing a new authoritarian order top-down would only widen the Promethean gap by removing decision-making from human hands (AM1 283). Instead, he advocates a personally enacted moral imperative, one that, arguably, reflects humanity's object-oriented nature:
Own only such possessions whose maxims of action could also become maxims of your own actions. [AM1 298]
When in his later writings, Anders focuses on a broader application of the categorical imperative, he argues that the moral code in the modern technological era no longer regulates human-to-human interaction, but rather shapes the interaction between humans and the current and future status of technology. He elaborates it thus:
Act so that the maxim of your actions could be that of the apparatus of which you are or shall be a part
or, inverted negatively:
Never act so that the maxim of your actions contradicts the maxims of the apparatuses of which you are or shall be a part. [AMI1 290]
To meet the demands of this imperative—to bridge the Promethean differential and gain a clearer view of the spatio-temporal span of human action—Anders invokes a duty to confront the apocalyptic fears and he fosters the importance of cultivating one's moral fantasy (moralische Phantasie). This moral task consists in
the attempt to overcome the "differential," to adjust the capacity and elasticity of our imagination and sentiment to the scale of our own creations and to the unforeseeable extent of the damage we are capable of causing; in other words, to align our capacity to imagine and feel with our capacity to act. [AM1 273]
This ethical strategy remains central to his nuclear ethics throughout the 1960s.
Anders' approach to responsibility is, in many ways, reminiscent of the ones by Jaspers and Jonas. Most importantly, there is an apocalyptic element in their respective philosophies, expressed through the premonition of humanity's impending eradication. All three agree that this annihilation can be either physical (AM1 33)—directly caused by the atomic bomb or, as in Jonas' case, indirectly resulting from bioengineering (ACT 178), pollution, or overpopulation—or ontological, following the expulsion of humankind's humanity.
Moreover, all three advocate mobilizing anxiety for ethical purposes. While Anders speaks of a duty to confront the apocalyptic fears, Jaspers emphasizes the value of having courage in the face of adversity. He elaborates on this idea in his 1956 radio lecture with the following words:
It is also not a brave but rather a philosophy that is growing rigid when one is watching the allegedly recognized going-under unshakably until it buries one. It is brave to allow oneself to be shaken to the core and to experience what is revealed in the limit situation.
Jonas, for his part, famously addresses the "heuristics of fear" in The Imperative of Responsibility, along with his "spectrum of fears" concerning the hydrogen bomb and the nuclear peril. In all three authors, the anticipation of anxiety, dread, and fear is considered an asset in the pursuit of a global and future-oriented ethics.
Furthermore, the three authors endorse the adaptation of new ethical viewpoints. As shown above, Anders' imperative is object-oriented and grounded in the faculty of imagination. Jaspers proposes a principle of responsibility that is political-executive and rooted in the faculty of reason. In his radio lecture he outlines five principles that need to be upheld in an effort to achieve world peace, and he elaborates on this topic in more detail in the subsequently published book (AZM 40-8). Jonas' imperative is action-oriented and—comparable to Anders'—dependent on a new type of agency. He formulates this imperative as follows:
Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life. [IR 11]
Admittedly, these principles operate at different philosophical levels (and, as I will show below, lead to different outcomes), yet they roughly serve the same purpose, namely, to expand the temporal and spatial boundaries of classical, in Jonas' terms, "neighbor ethics" (ACT 9).
Looking solely at the dates of their publications, there is little doubt that Anders' imperative of responsibility anticipated those of Jaspers and Jonas. This raises the question of whether the affinities between them are coincidental, a mere expression of the Zeitgeist, or whether there is any indication that Jaspers or Jonas were influenced by Anders.
In Jonas' case, inspiration from Anders can be supported both biographically and philosophically. Having met at a seminar conducted by Edmund Husserl in Freiburg in the 1920s, the two young students formed a lifelong intellectual friendship. Documents from the Jonas archive at the University of Konstanz reveal that prior to the publication of his Philosophical Essays in 1974, Jonas wrote to Anders to apologize for positioning himself too close to Anders' arguments. In this work, Jonas anticipates the apocalyptic and ethical dimensions of his later thought, when writing, for example,
in the present state of our affairs and for some time to come, an advisable principle for normative decision may well be: healthy fear of our own "Promethean" power. [ACT 104]
Elsewhere, he addresses the sphere of human interaction that is
overshadowed by a growing realm of collective action where doer, deed, and effect are no longer the same as they were in the proximate sphere, and which by the enormity of its powers forces upon ethics a new dimension of responsibility never dreamt of before. [ACT 9]
Anders' reply is friendly and encouraging: there is still much to be said about technology and responsibility, and, having read the book, he is proud of Jonas—not as a father is proud of his son, but as a son is proud of his father.
When it comes to Jaspers, the answer is more complex. Biographically, it is known that the newlyweds, Anders and Arendt, stayed with the Jaspers in Heidelberg in the late 1920s, when Jaspers was Arendt's thesis supervisor. This suggests that a general intellectual exchange between them likely occurred during these years. Specifically regarding the nuclear question, letters reveal that Anders, upon learning Jaspers was preparing a book about the bomb, asked Arendt to bring Jaspers' attention to a newspaper article that he had written on this topic in the previous year. There is, however, no evidence that this request was fulfilled, nor any indication that Jaspers ever read Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen.
Philosophically, one can see that the foundations of Jaspers' nuclear ethics can already be found in Man in the Modern Age. Although the work was published in 1930, prior to the invention of the atomic bomb, it is here that Jaspers first speaks of man's impending annihilation. For example, one can find phrases such as:
when the apparatus is pitilessly annihilating one human being after another. [MM 70]
We might conceive of the using-up of our planet as the locale and substance of a gigantic factory, run by the masses of mankind. [MM 71]
In the rationalisation and universalisation of the life-order there has grown contemporaneously with its fantastic success an awareness of imminent ruin tantamount to a dread of the approaching end of all that makes life worth living. [MM 62]
Man can live only when, using his reason and working in co-operation with his fellows, he busies himself about the ordering of the technical supply of mass-needs. He must, therefore, devote himself with ardour to the cares of this world unless he is himself to perish amid its decay. [MM 74]
Thus, although Anders was the first of the three philosophers to formulate the idea of global responsibility explicitly, Jaspers anticipated many of its components. This is further complicated by the fact that Anders is aware of Jaspers' notion of limit situations (Grenzsituationen), briefly referring to it in a chapter of Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, albeit in the context of physical Grenzsituationen (AM1 37, 328n37) that does not capture Jaspers' usage of the term. All these details muddle the question of who influenced whom.
What can, however, be established is that Anders, allegedly being a specialist in "atomic morale," read Jaspers' 27-page booklet containing the radio lecture as well as the subsequently published atomic bomb book—and did not like either one of them. In his letters to Arendt, he is eager to emphasize these details:
And as a supposed nuclear morality specialist (the things people come up with!), I am expected to use exclamation marks constantly. But for God's sake, only exclamation marks. Protesting is the praying of today: an inherent renunciation of action.
Have you seen Jaspers' brochure on the atomic bomb? Presumably. I find it completely inadequate in terms of urgency and the approach conveyed by its tone. People cannot be addressed in this way.
His brochure, unfortunately, misses the mark in terms of tone. No one is moved in this way. [AA 73]
Speaking of Jaspers: in Geneva, I had a quick look at his book on the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, I find it totally inapposite; it sounds as if it had been "dictated," written without a self-censoring scissor, and instead of a reasoned opinion, it contains preliminary considerations for a reasoned opinion (which are of no concern to anyone). Physicists' scorn for this book is so great that I almost became an advocate for it in conversations.
In other words, Anders contends that the overall tone of Jaspers' nuclear booklet is "off," criticizing its language as overly prescriptive and authoritarian. More than it being just a comment on style, this remark indicates that Anders views Jaspers as a lord of the bomb. Furthermore, he condemns Jaspers' book as anti-scientific and claims that it has aroused great contempt among physicists.
Finally, Anders emphasizes that he, on the one hand, and Jaspers and Arendt, on the other hand, hold radically different views regarding the atomic bomb issue. He evidences this when he writes to Arendt:
You must have received my book on Japan months ago. I suspect that we really are standing on two shores, neither of which can be seen or understood from the other one. For my arguments are starkly anti-Jasperian; and you, based on considerations I cannot even begin to guess at, have taken a highly positive stance on J.'s book on the atomic bomb.
The reason for his anti-Jasperian stance is never fully articulated. Yet it is likely to stem from Anders' objections to existentialism, fueled by—or at least consistent with—his materialistic convictions. In numerous texts from the 1940s and 1950s, Anders accuses the existentialist approach of being individualistic, nihilistic, and misanthropic: celebrating authenticity, inner life, will, and abstract principles over physical and situated engagement in the material world. Accordingly, he criticizes the argumentation in Jaspers' book on the atomic bomb for being too general, being significant to no one, and lacking urgency and the author's positioning.
To summarize, Anders objects to Jaspers' nuclear ethics as being authoritarian, unscientific, and abstract; it is also too political in the sense that it shifts responsibility from the personal sphere to the institutional sphere, yet not political enough in the sense that it passivizes human agents.
Taken together, the lack of conflicting evidence and their fundamentally diverging views on the bomb issue make it unlikely—albeit not impossible—that Jaspers' notion of world responsibility was modeled on Anders' imperative of responsibility.
To conclude this modest attempt at a Wirkungsgeschichte, I argue that the notion of global responsibility emerged in at least two distinct forms around the same time, dividing the intellectual diaspora of postwar Germany into two camps—each occupying opposing philosophical shores: Anders and Jonas on one side, Jaspers on the other. In tracing the meandering riverbed that separates these shores, I identified two parameters as essential to the concept of global responsibility: first, whether it is framed as an imperative or a principle; and second, whether it is grounded in imagination or reason. While Anders and Jonas advocate an object-oriented or action-oriented imperative of responsibility that relies on the power of imagination, Jaspers articulates a principle of responsibility rooted in the faculty of reason. These differences are presented here in order to elaborate on how the creed of global responsibility is enacted in practice. The socio-political implications of these findings remain to be fully explored. For now, I maintain that any further discussion regarding world responsibility needs to take this fragmentation into account.
