Responsibility: The First Virtue of Innovation? A discussion of some ethical and meta-ethical issues concerning the concept of ‘responsibility’ in technological innovation

Abstract

In this paper I investigate the concept of responsibility in the context of technological innovation, with reference to two types of responsibility: ex post and ex ante responsibility. Exposing the shortcomings of ex post responsibility in the context of innovation, I examine different ways of conceiving of a form of ex ante responsibility suitable for our current technological situation. Here I identify two positions with very different approaches to the question of the ethical status of responsibility: Hans Jonas’s concept of responsibility as an ethical principle structuring moral behavior, and René von Schomberg’s idea of responsibility as “responsiveness” linked to procedures of communication and collaboration. Rejecting von Schomberg’s concept on ethico-philosophical grounds, I argue in favor of a critical rehabilitation of some basic thoughts in the philosophy of Jonas. Finally, I suggest taking the step from the Jonasian ethics of responsibility towards the Hegelian concept of Sittlichkeit – a concrete social morality that disentangles responsibility from the dilemmas of subjectivist morality.