(review)
How do we lead a good life - in the Aristotelian sense - with modern technology, knowing that this same technology can do away not just with us, but with all forms of higher life on this planet? This is the question that the Danish philosopher, Peter Kemp (b. 1937) asks in "Das Unerstezliche. Eine Technologie-Ethik" (1), his doctoral thesis from 1991 which has now been translated from danish into german (2). His answer is not a straigtforward and simple one. It involves, firstly, a theoretical determination of ethics as practical visdom which is guided by a vision of 'the good life' as free giving and recieving (3) between members of a community. Secondly, Kemp's answer involves a practical examination of ethical features of particular technologies in the light of this conception of ethics.
Given this perspective, one would have thought it appropiate for Kemp to discuss the so-called 'discursive ethics' of Karl-Otto Apel, which originated from a similar question, namely the question of survival confronted with the threats of nuclear warfare and environmental deterioration. Apel argued that the survival of the 'real communicative community' was ethically relevant, only if humanity was capable of realizing the good life in the form of the 'ideal communicative community'. (4) As with many of his generation at that time his faith in the logic of history made him belive that humanity eventually would attain this goal, and therefore our survival was a matter of universal ethical importance.
Nowadays - as faith in history as a reasonable proces is shaken - such a foundation of ethics is not all that convincing, and Apel himself has thus since turned to the inherrent rationality in discursive communication in order to give a 'trancendental-pragmatic' foundation of a universally valid ethical theory. (5) Confronted with the split of reason into two alternatives, utopian ideals and rationality, Apel chose rationality, probably sharing to some extent Habermas' fear of irrationalism, (6) although still retaining the ideal, but now as a hope without any rational foundation.
Kemp, younger and not haunted by any national traumas, choses the utopian ideal as a vision, a regulative idea, which serves as a guiding principle for our practical considerations and actions. The good life is not a question which can be solved by theoretical speculation (p. 44) or empirical science (p. 13). Nor can rationality itself be the answer. To create new questions and new goals, and to be able to put oneself in the place of another, one needs fantasy; and reason is exactly this union of rationality and fantasy (p. 210). It is not a matter of setting up universal laws for our conduct - which would be counter-productive, i.e. inhuman in many cases (p. 53) - or constructing the good life as an idea to be realized in the course of history. We have to do the job ourselves, whenever we are confronted by situations, which require us to (re)act in some way. Ethical reflexions are specific in their aim and context, asking "What would be the right thing to do in this situation?"
Ethics is practical wisdom in which we must take into account, how we ourselves have gained experience, what we have obtained and what have been achieved by other good persons. Kemp confronts the anthropology of Heidegger with an image of man as a sensitive creature (p. 28). Man is not only technically creating and actively manipulating with tools; passivity, receptivity and openness toward the world including other human beings is just as characteristic of a human life. Action is not just a strategic enterprise, rather it includes the ability to respect norms for good behaviour, as well as spontanous giving to others. These aspect of human life is what makes communities possible and also what makes Kemp's guiding vision of free giving and recieving sensible. It gives the ontological foundation for the possibility of ethics as practical visdom, where we can relate to others and learn from experience, our own as well as others.
Kemp underlines that philosophical ethics cannot be neutral descriptions. Philosophical texts, as well as all other texts, imply a view of human beings, nature and society which in itself is an ethical attitude (p. 43): The way we see man, that is the way we treat man - and vice versa (p.275). In accordance with this conception Kemp leaps back in the history of philosophy to find theories, which can elaborate and support his view.
As prescribed by Aristotle, Kemp choses models to learn from, although - given the fact that most of them are dead - he cannot be their companion but has to rely on their narrations, where they have rationalized their ethical considerations and their experience with ethical behavior. Drawing from the philosophy of Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Wilhelm Schapp, Sartre, Levinas and Ricoeur - and criticizing Plato, Heidegger and Hans Jonas - Kemp develops the individual and collective ideal of the good life, but without sacrificing the Christian and Kantian imperative which emphasizes the irreplaceability of each single human being. "No one is indispensable, everyone is irreplaceable" is his motto. This moral stance, which is developed in the first part of the book, is reflected both in the general reflections and in the specific considerations concerning the different types of technology throughout the second part.
Kemp points to narration as being central to ethical thinking. Every story aims at a certain point, and we tell stories to each other in order to communicate the moral implicit in the story (p. 74). We create good stories to make our ethical views plausible and convincing, and Kemp's stories about the mishandling of the dioxinpolution of Seveso by political authorities and scientific experts (pp. 61-70), the origin of the personal computer as a grasroot-technological innovation (pp. 212-14) and the blind spots in Niels Bohrs and Robert Oppenheimers ideas about how the scientific community could be a rolemodel for the ideal community (pp. 251-60) demonstrate quite clearly his points. But this line of arguing is not used in all the main discussions. The long discussion of bioethical questions (p. 129-69) reflects - and relates to - the anglosaxon discussions in most of its points. Kemp argues convincingly, but the handling of the problems is quite traditional.
Kemp is at his best as he develops his theoretical conception of ethics which is both original, interresting and wellargued. The analyses of different technologies and institutions, where he shows the ideologies inherrent in them and makes clear how they violate the rights of human beings are thoughtstimulating and well argued as well. He undermines our faith in experts, scientist and politicians in the same way as Noam Chomsky, using factual evidence and basic logic. When it comes to matters such as genetics, experimentation on embryos, and abortion, however, he is skating on thin ice, left with a hunch that there is something rotten in this way of approaching the problems, but without the means to put decesive arguments against it, maybe because he do not know the (hi)stories of these issues.
Somehow he lets himself be trapped by his own endorsement of the 'difficult midst', a concept from Aristotle, which he presents as the ideal way through life: We should avoid extremes and try to obtain the union of reason and wish (p. 271-73. We succeed in having a good life, if we succeed to live according to this midst, (p. 44), and from this, we eventually gain practical wisdom from which other people can benefit if they choose us as their role models, their 'wise men'.
This "realistic" conception turns out to be exactly what ethics is not supposed to be, a compromise between what is the worldly situation and what we would like it to be. This is clear in the discussion of the possible uses of human embryos (pp. 156-57). No compromise is ethical in itself. Ethics should be kept clean from worldly pollution; if not, then we can negotiate all principles, including the irreplacability of every single human being. And I am sure that is not the intention of Kemp. The good life may be impossible to realize, but that is exactly its ethical force. Ethical principles should be pure and simple; nobody would die for a muddled principle. Kemps regards this attitude as an all too easy way out of specific ethical problems (p. 273), but dying is never easy!
Kemp tells us, that ethics should limit the free use of technology (p. 274), and tries to reach some specific conclussions. But when it comes to placing restrictions on the 'godfather' of all modern technology, that is, science, he is all to lenient. He still proclaims the innocense of knowledge (p. 150), while at the same time showing the intervowenness of science and technology (following Heidegger (pp. 24-27)), focusing on the role of wars in the development of technology and describing technology as oppressive in war as well as in peacetime (p. 271).
Kemp asks - like Apel did almost twenty years ago - for a new basic ethical-political orientation, but in between modernity has gone through almost fatal sufferings, which has aggravated the situation then described by Apel, on the one hand the world needing so much this new orientation, on the other the difficulties in giving this orientation a solid foundation. (7) Kemp has taken these sufferings seriously, but has not given the problem of the foundation of ethics enough consideration. He takes the binding force of morality for granted and presents his guiding vision to people who want to do the right thing, but he gives no explanations - such as drives or reason - to back up the saintly will to be good, no explanation as to why we are good and what holds the majority of us, who are non-saints back from doing evil.
1. Berlin: Wichern-Verlag, 1992, 277 p., plus 44 p. references, litterature and indices. Page references are indicated in brackets in the text.
2. A Swedish translation has been available for some time; French and English editions are under way.
3. Cf. the Danish original Det Uerstattelige, København: Spektrum, 1991, p. 60. The German edition speaks of "free give and take" (p. 54).
4. Karl-Otto Apel: "Die konflikte unserer Zeit und das Erfordernis einer ethisch-politischen Grundorientierung" (1975) in Apel: Diskurs und Verantwortung, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990, pp. 38 seq.
5. Karl-Otto Apel: "Zurück zur Normalität? - Oder könnten wir aus der nationalen Katastrophe etwas Besonderes gelernt haben?" (1988) in Apel, op. cit., pp. 448 seq.
6. Vide e.g. Jürgen Habermas: "Gedanken bei der Vorbereitung einer Konferens" in Brian McGuiness et al.: "Der Löwe spricht ... und wir können ihn nicht verstehen", Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1991, p. 26
7. Karl-Otto Apel: "Die konflikte unserer Zeit und das Erfordernis einer ethisch-politischen Grundorientierung" (1975) in Apel, op. cit., p. 16