More people should be aware of Hans Jonas. I read his book in high school and found it very useful. I
However, I disagree that reference to Hans Jonas is a useful translation of longtermism. Hans Jonas defends a specific moral theory (same for Birnbacher) and the ecological imperative is very closely related to Kantian philosophy. Hence, Jonas’ term does for instance not includethe optimising mindset (“lets not only make sure they have okay lives, i.e. they can exist, but make sure they have lives which are as good as possible”). Birnbacher does not capture that non-utilitarian values (and makes it more likely that people think mistakenly longtermism =utilitarianism). But maybe all of these considerations are less important because almost no one will actually remember where these terms came from.
More people should be aware of Hans Jonas. I read his book in high school and found it very useful. I
However, I disagree that reference to Hans Jonas is a useful translation of longtermism. Hans Jonas defends a specific moral theory (same for Birnbacher) and the ecological imperative is very closely related to Kantian philosophy. Hence, Jonas’ term does for instance not includethe optimising mindset (“lets not only make sure they have okay lives, i.e. they can exist, but make sure they have lives which are as good as possible”). Birnbacher does not capture that non-utilitarian values (and makes it more likely that people think mistakenly longtermism =utilitarianism). But maybe all of these considerations are less important because almost no one will actually remember where these terms came from.