<![CDATA[This article aims to critically elaborate the concepts of moral asymmetry and the heuristic of fear in Hans Jonas’s ethics of responsibility, and to assess their relevance as a normative framework for addressing contemporary ecological and technological crises. The advancement of technology, industrialization, and development has multiplied the causal power of modern humanity, producing impacts that are long-term, transgenerational, and often irreversible. This situation exposes the limitations of classical moral ethics, which remain oriented toward present, reciprocal, and short-term intersubjective relations. The fundamental philosophical problem that arises is how moral obligations can be imposed on present agents with regard to subjects who have not yet been born and who lack the capacity to defend their own interests. This study employs a normative philosophical analysis using conceptual and hermeneutic approaches to Hans Jonas’s major work, particularly The Imperative of Responsibility, complemented by a limited dialogue with utilitarianism and contractualism. The analysis demonstrates that moral asymmetry highlights a structural imbalance between present moral agents and future affected parties, thereby generating obligations that are unilateral and non-reciprocal. Meanwhile, the heuristic of fear functions as a rational tool for evaluating existential risks under conditions of radical uncertainty, by prioritizing the prevention of irreversible destruction over short-term benefit calculations. This article affirms that Hans Jonas’s ethics is not an ethic of pessimism or irrational fear, but rather an ethic of existential prudence that is highly relevant for articulating intergenerational responsibility in environmental ethics, the philosophy of technology, and the normative foundations of public policy.]]>
