philosopher who parses the role of the “ought” when envisioning what “ought” to be done. Responsibility responds to the “forward determination of what is to be done,” he observes. “First comes the ought-to-be of the object, second the ought-to-do of the subject who, in virtue of his power, is called to care” [2.36]. As living creatures, we are called by the natural domain to care. We are to care for all that lives. “Only what is alive, in its constitutive indigence and fragility, can be an object of responsibility” [2.36].3 In this treatment I explore the question: can Jonas’ notion of responsibility help us lay the foundation for an Astroethics of Responsibility [2.63]? My answer is affirmative.
2.2.1 First Foundational Question: Who Are We?
How do we ground our ethics when we earthlings are looking at the sky? By grounding I mean justifying. Ethics, as the theory underlying moral action, cannot simply ride the winds of whim or personal preference. Its foundation needs to be cemented down. How are we going to do this?
We can begin the planting process by asking three fundamental questions: Who are we? What do we value? What should we do? Let us address each of these in turn; and then we will address the issues already on our list.
Who are we? Evolution has made us into responders. According to theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, responsibility ethics is grounded in human nature. “What is implicit in the idea of responsibility is the image of man-the-answerer, man engaged in dialogue, man acting in response to action upon him” [2.54]. An astroethics of responsibility could be grounded in the responsive trait belonging to our human nature.
Who are we? By we here I mean the entire human race on planet Earth. Inherent in asking about astroethics for earthlings is the question: Who speaks for Earth? [2.83]. How could we justify a moral agent that does not build on responsibility to humanity and of humanity in the form of a single planetary society?
A single planetary society becomes a community of moral deliberation when addressing the relationship between Earth and what is off-Earth. Our solar neighborhood or the Milky Way metropolis is not the private property of one nation; nor is an off-Earth site the claim of whichever team of astronauts arrives first. The competition and rivalry that plague our everyday territorial claims on Earth must be superseded by a global community about to enter the space environment which surrounds all of us.
This single Earth community does not exist yet, even though the United Nations has been working with this concept of the we at least since 1967. The 1967 UN Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, stipulated: “§ 1. The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interest of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind. § 2. Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies” [2.85]. After looking toward the heavens, we earthlings look back at each other and recognize a newly founded unity. Octavio Chon-Torres notes: “The treaty of outer space is a good example of how our expansion in the Universe should help us to conceive [of] ourselves as a united humankind” [2.13].
Our first moral responsibility is to work toward the establishment of a single planetary society, which may in time become expanded into a galactic moral community. Here is the warrant: virtually every decision regarding what earthlings do in space will have repercussions for every resident of Earth. Therefore, the concept of planetary ethics includes, among other things, representative participation. We can envision a future replete with a single universal humanity; and we can incarnate that vision proleptically by acting now out of that vision. Our first obligation is to become who we are: the one people of Earth, diverse in the past but united in the future.
2.2.2 Second Foundational Question: What Do We Value?
Life. Like cream in ol’ fashioned milk bottles, life floats to the top of the astrobiologist’s value bottle. “I suggest that the long-term goal for astrobiology and society is to enhance the richness and diversity of life in the Universe,” avers NASA’s Christopher McKay [2.47].
No one debates whether or not to value life. Yet, just how we value life has become a quandary. “Whether secular or theological, the most important question about the foundations for ethical value turns on the distinction between intrinsic value—value independent of a valuing agent—and instrumental value—value in relation to something else like the needs of humans” [2.26]. Steven Dick, former holder of the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, turns on this distinction to develop a cosmocentric ethic. The cosmos has intrinsic value, concludes Dick. Or, perhaps more modestly, a cosmocentric ethic will stretch the scope of terrestrial human valuing beyond anthropocentrism or even geocentrism to incorporate extraterrestrial life in both microbial and intelligent forms. Dick’s cosmocentric ethic “establishes the universe and all or part of its life as a priority rather than just humans or even terrestrial life in general” [2.26]. Where Dick puts cosmocentrism, I put the galactic common good.
Is it possible for anthropocentric and geocentric earthlings to transcend their own myopia? Yes, according to astrotheologian Andreas Losch, “We cannot avoid some anthropocentric bias, but we humans are also the ones who can speculate beyond the bounds of our experience” [2.41]. The shift toward a galactic or even cosmocentric perspective will require a realistic respect for the tension existing within our human nature: our proclivity toward self-centered myopia in tension with our capacity to speculate broadly and altruistically.
Dick’s proposal of a cosmocentric ethic—in conjunction with my proposal for a galactic common good—compels us to ask: What do we already value? Do we actually value the safety, welfare, and future health of Planet Earth? Our ecoethicists say, no. They complain bitterly that de facto the human race values its home planet too little. Even with enlightened self-interest as a motive, we planetary citizens have befouled our terrestrial home. One might reasonably ask: If we terrestrials have befouled our own planetary nest, might we do the same for every off-Earth site we visit? [2.9].
Geocentric values are constantly assaulted by rival greeds. Even high-minded Enlightenment values—freedom, equality, justice, dignity, peace—are left orphaned by the vicious competition for economic survival if not domination. Arnould, using the metaphor of evolution, fears that what has happened on Earth may be repeated in space [2.4] [2.5]. The human attitude of domination of the fittest (or, sometimes also, of survival) leads to growing terrestrial pollution, toxic waste, even climate change which will modify, in a few decades, the level of the oceans, the rain pattern, the distribution of the deserts and the cultivatable zones.
To avoid the same polluting of space with earthling myopia, Arnould draws on the equivalent of intrinsic value and proposes that we “santuarize” outer space. By recognizing that space “transcends all our actual economic motivations …. It is probably the role of national and international space agencies to devise and introduce rules of effective control, and create conditions that would govern any form of exploitation still to come from space” [2.2]. In short, Arnould recommends that, by “sanctuarizing” space, our policy-setting transcends the vested interest of nations and businesses.
If “sanctuary” here connotes precedents already set on Earth for wildlife sanctuaries or protected parks, then I concur that setting a policy of sanctuarization of space would be consistent with our fundamental values. Yet, it could mean more. It could imply communion between what is natural and what is distinctively human; and this communion spawns moral power. Ecoethicist Cynthia Moe-Lobeda testifies how “human moral power flows primarily from deep communion between God, human creatures, and the broader community of life” [2.51]. Or, “the sacramental communion—God incarnate in us and among us as human communities and as a planetary or even cosmic community of life—is a locus of moral power” [2.51]. In a moment I will lift up the concept