Hans Jonas developed the “ecological imperative”, the duty to ensure the continued existence of humanity.
Dieter Birnbacher later developed utilitarian future ethics in 1988, making an argument for a large number of people.
The field of longtermism could be “Langzeitethik”, and Birnbacher introduced the term “Langzeitverantwortung”.
Longtermists would then be “Befürworter der Langzeitverantwortung ”.
I think translators should get familiar with the existing German literature. (I myself have not read any of the books, so I’m not sure if I’m infringing on existing terminology)
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.
I agree that it seems like a good idea to get somewhat familiar with that literature if we want to translate “longtermism” well.
I think I wouldn’t use “Langzeitethik” as this suggests, as you say, that longtermism is a field of research. In my mind, “longtermism” typically refers to a set of ethical views or a group of people/institutions.
Probably people sometimes use the term to refer to a research field, but my impression is that this rather rare. Is that correct? :)
Also, I think that a new term—like “Befürworter der Langzeitverantwortung”—which is significantly longer than the established term, is unlikely to stick around both in conversation or in writing. “Longtermists” is faster to say and, at least in the beginning, easier to understand among EAs, so I think that people will prefer that. This might matter for the translation. It could be kind of confusing if the term in the new German EA literature is quite different from the one that is actually used by people in the German community
So the field is called “Zukunftsethik” (ethics of the future), and German-speaking philosophers have published about it for decades: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zukunftsethik
Hans Jonas developed the “ecological imperative”, the duty to ensure the continued existence of humanity.
Dieter Birnbacher later developed utilitarian future ethics in 1988, making an argument for a large number of people.
The field of longtermism could be “Langzeitethik”, and Birnbacher introduced the term “Langzeitverantwortung”.
Longtermists would then be “Befürworter der Langzeitverantwortung ”.
I think translators should get familiar with the existing German literature. (I myself have not read any of the books, so I’m not sure if I’m infringing on existing terminology)
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.
I agree that it seems like a good idea to get somewhat familiar with that literature if we want to translate “longtermism” well.
I think I wouldn’t use “Langzeitethik” as this suggests, as you say, that longtermism is a field of research. In my mind, “longtermism” typically refers to a set of ethical views or a group of people/institutions. Probably people sometimes use the term to refer to a research field, but my impression is that this rather rare. Is that correct? :)
Also, I think that a new term—like “Befürworter der Langzeitverantwortung”—which is significantly longer than the established term, is unlikely to stick around both in conversation or in writing. “Longtermists” is faster to say and, at least in the beginning, easier to understand among EAs, so I think that people will prefer that. This might matter for the translation. It could be kind of confusing if the term in the new German EA literature is quite different from the one that is actually used by people in the German community
I agree. I think it’s interesting that the field of “Zukunftsethik” exist but I wouldn’t use the term as a name for a movement