Let us extract from the preceding those characteristics of human action which are relevant for a comparison with the state of things today.
1. All dealing with the non-human world, i.e., the whole realm of techne (with the exception of medicine), was ethically neutral – in respect both of the object and the subject of such action: in respect of the object, because it impinged but little on the self-sustaining nature of things and thus raised no question of permanent injury to the integrity of its object, the natural order as a whole; and in respect of the agent subject it was ethically neutral because techne as an activity conceived itself as a determinate tribute to necessity and not as an indefinite, self-validating advance to mankind’s major goal, claiming in its pursuit man’s ultimate effort and concern. The real vocation of man lay elsewhere. In brief, action on non-human things did not constitute a sphere of authentic ethical significance.
2. Ethical significance belonged to the direct dealing of man with man, including the dealing with himself: all traditional ethics is anthropocentric.
3. For action in this domain, the entity “man” and his basic condition was considered constant in essence and not itself an object of reshaping techne.
4. The good and evil about which action had to care lay close to the act, either in the praxis itself or in its immediate reach, and were not a matter for remote planning. This proximity of ends pertained to time as well as space. The effective range of action was small, the time-span of foresight, goal-setting and accountability was short, control of circumstances limited. Proper conduct had its immediate criteria and almost immediate consummation. The long run of consequences beyond was left to chance, fate or providence. Ethics accordingly was of the here and now, of occasions as they arise between men, of the recurrent, typical situations of private and public life. The good man was he who met these contingencies with virtue and wisdom, cultivating these powers in himself, and for the rest resigning himself to the unknown.
All enjoinders and maxims of traditional ethics, materially different as they may be, show this confinement to the immediate setting of the action. “Love thy neighbor as thyself”; “Do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you”; “Instruct your child in the way of truth”; “Strive for excellence by developing and actualizing the best potentialities of your being qua man”; “Subordinate your individual good to the common good”; “Never treat your fellow man as a means only but always also as an end in himself” – and so on. Note that in all these maxims the agent and the “other” of his action are sharers of a common present. It is those alive now and in some commerce with me that have a claim on my conduct as it affects them by deed or omission. The ethical universe is composed of contemporaries, and its horizon to the future is confined by the foreseeable span of their lives. Similarly confined is its horizon of place, within which the agent and the other meet as neighbor, friend or foe, as superior and subordinate, weaker and stronger, and in all the other roles in which humans interact with one another. To this proximate range of action all morality was geared.
Technology and Responsibility…(III)