The atomic condition

Günther Anders (1902-1992), who was at the same time as Hans Jonas and Hannah Arendt the pupil of Husserl and Heidegger, thought, however, that resolutely turning to philosophy asked that we turn away from his academic exercise. He constantly made effort to develop a thought of the worldwho is both required by him and addressed to him. Thought which is particularly at work in the three texts that make up the collection Hiroshima is everywheretrying to describe and challenge a world that the threat of a nuclear war has brought into the era of its own end.

Enormity of the last era

The collection aims first of all to convince of its own dating. It opens on a written newspaper “ in the thirteen atomic age “(Hpp. 212), that is to say in 1958: “ August 6, 1945 was the day zero. The day it has been shown that universal history may not continue, that we are in any case capable of cutting its thread, this day inaugurated a new age of world history. (…) We live in the year 13 of the disaster (P. 146). New era, which sees humanity having the technical means of destroying themselves, to the point that they are like qualifying their time. Because atomic weapons are the threat of the end of the world, of which they now define the State, at the same time as they circumscribe the horizon of all politics. This atomic condition will also be that of all humanity possibly to come. The atomic era is indeed the last, whatever the outcome of the fight against the specter of nuclear war, since if weapons can be destroyed, the knowledge which allows them to be produced.

Now this latter is properly normally, because its monstrous horizon upset all the concepts in use, which are those of both theoretical and technical rationality: the instruments of mass destruction are no longer means, as soon as their use would prohibit any achievement of purposes ; THE bombs atomic are no longer weaponswhich obey this expired instrumental logic ; They cannot even be used for threats, since the threatening assumes that what he threatens is not absurd ; A conflict nuclear would no longer be a warwhich only makes sense to project in a post-war period ; THE opponents cannot appear as enemiessince the entirely destructive explosion excludes the very possibility of the shock of forces.

Distress cosmopolitanism

The atomic condition is that of a humanity affected by a radical precariousness (mortality of humanity itself, and this of its fact), unsurpassable (the means of destruction are not forgotten) and universal. The questioning of the existence of the human world in its everything admits the awareness of this whole of fatally neighboring beings, whose possible instant death will be without border. By his fact, “ Common humanity is an obvious and massive reality “(P. 75), who people” A unique country “,” The earth (P. 112).

However, if it is true that “ Politics takes place in the atomic situation (P. 73), this situation requires a singular political configuration. And Anders is not content to promote an all -round struggle against the production of atomic weapons, by encouraging a strike from all those whose contribution is necessary to him (M, p. 504). He concludes that a revision of the concept of sovereignty is essential, which is commensurate with its urgent restriction: knowing that nuclear explosions, including when it comes to alleged trials (notion whose author relevant the relevance, under the impossible isolation of a device which cannot, consequently, claim to be experimental), do not know the borders, the territorial registration of acts sovereign. The spatial unlimitation of their effects would therefore require the political limitation of the attributes of sovereignty: “ No state must have sovereign right on actions that cause harmful consequences for other states “(Hpp. 129), which requires the establishment of “ there Relative sovereigntyguaranteed by reciprocal control (P. 238). Note the moderation of the subject, which is content to state the conditions for a composibility of sovereignties in the atomic era. This limitation of sovereignty would in no way mean the expiration of the concept. Furthermore, like Kant before him, Anders rejects the ideal of a world state, which the tendency to centralize power would condemn to be a “ planetary dictatorship “(Hlp. 394).

An imperative of imagination

The author notes, however, that political solutions are insufficient, where there is an absolute necessity to refrain from doing what can be done. This acting must become an authentic taboo, which comes out of morality. However, the ethics of atomic age must first be an ethics of imagination. In the atomic era, the risk is that of a blockage of the representation, in front of a feasible which exceeds the dimensions of the imaginable, and Anders notes that this deficiency in imagination would be also perceptual and emotional. Now how to be responsible for what is irrepresentable to us ? How to feel guilty where an invisible evil is made without enmity to victims who do not feel hatred ? How to avoid strict good conscience, when an emotional neutralized act produces irrepresentable effects, so that the inhibition mechanisms are themselves inhibited ? Hence the appearance of an unprecedented ethical category, the “ guilty innocent Or the guilty-video. THE Atomic age commandments So open to the requirement of an enlargement of the limits of the imaginable to the dimensions of the monstrous acts which are now possible.

Anti-echmann

It is in this perspective that we must read the Correspondence with Eatherly. This “ hero »Of fallen war, whose depression made him judge in the units of madness, and interne, is first of all matter to imagine, in that he says the unimaginable character of the possible, and the suffering that this can produce in the one who opened the way to the Hiroshima bomber. He is also a heuristic figure, for the one who was somehow the scout of theEnola Gay is also the “ pioneer “New innocent guilt, therefore a” symbol of the future ». He is finally reason to hope, as he claims the guilt withdrawn to him: knowing himself and wanting to be guilty, he commits crimes which, as acts sanctioned as it is attributable, would allow him to appropriate this guilt. Dialectical reversal of the remuneration relationship: guilt must refer to a fault, the sanction of which is worth, which must therefore be obtained.

Now this behavior, motivated by the feeling of a recurred guilt of being impunted, made of Eatherly the “ counte-fee of Eichmann “(Ip. 46). If the “ technicalization of our being », By which we become simple cogs of a machine, in the service of an action whose consequences are irrepresentable to us, also deprives us of any affective reaction against The action in question, the case Eichmann is the extreme, frightening and scandalous incarnation (by what it has in bad faith) of a possible time. However, if Eichmann tries to clear himself by invoking his status as a simple cog, Eatherly accuses, and this against the celebrations that the system reserves him, for having been a cog. It shows that instrumentalization, far from obliterating responsibility, can itself be attributable, and that those who have not stopped from all humanity assumes it.

An unfounded ethics

These analyzes are still relevant, and should remain so, by virtue of the indestructibility of atomic knowledge they underline. THE “ club Is more open, and there is no shortage of new candidates for membership. Let us add that the autosuppression of humanity now has other possible than the only “ assured mutual destruction ». However, we regret that the ethical emergency of the safeguard of humanity does not give rise to a reflection on its foundations. Indeed, the question of knowing what makes the very existence of humanity an unconditioned value, and therefore of its conservation the absolute imperative, does not receive an answer. It is certainly not a forgetfulness. This absence of a foundation is themed and assumed. But it is in the name of this emergency, which means that at the time of throwing itself into the water to save a man who drowns, there cannot be a question of debating the basis of the necessity of its rescue. Is the argument for a text called to be (finally) read in the year 63 (2008) ? Especially since one wonders if this foundation would not itself contribute to the power of conviction on the one hand, and to the extension of reflection to other questioning of the human world on the other hand. To determine what, of humans, cannot at any price be destroyed, would indeed make it possible to formulate a normative discourse condemning all of the practices or configurations likely to undermine it, which would give more extension to the subject. If the urgency lasts a long time, and if the radicality of the analyzes is itself efficient and fruitful, it would be good for the question of foundations to be posed.

There “ disuse of hostility »» ?

On one point, the author’s analyzes seem to us to be taken in default. The growing technicalization of war has not generalized what it calls the “ disuse of hostility “, Characteristic of a war which would have become without passion, because it would no longer make possible the representation of an enemy or a victim. We can doubt that the world is now the place of a war without passion. The neutralization of war actions that have become purely technical and the axiological disqualification of the force mean that the use of the latter now requires being justified by an end, the importance of which is able to erase the negative character of the means. The use of what is only a decree instrument is itself legitimate than If it is worth it. It therefore requires that what is at stake be presented as absolutely essential. But this teleological escalation is not without a rise in passions. The crusades are hardly apathetic. So that the return of the just war paradigm is not without an emotional intensification of conflicts. Let us add again that one can get used to everything, including the “ apocalyptic situation “, And that” The evidence of common humanity Perhaps not remained as massive as it was for Anders.