Ethics on Earth©

On 6 August 1945, at precisely 8:15 a.m., the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb code-named Little Boy over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Within seconds, a blinding flash of light occurred. It was followed by a mushroom cloud. Together, they transformed the city into a landscape of fire, ash, and silence. Tens of thousands of people were instantly incinerated, and by the end of the year, an estimated 140,000 had perished from burns, radiation sickness, and injuries. Hiroshima was the first city to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon. This marked a technological milestone achieved at the immeasurable cost of civilian life.

The bombing of Hiroshima was justified by its planners as a means to end World War II swiftly. Yet the scale and nature of the devastation marked a profound ethical rupture. Never before had humanity wielded such godlike power over life and death, capable of annihilating entire cities in an instant. The survivors, known as hibakusha, bore lifelong scars not only on their bodies but on their moral and existential outlook. As we reflect on this day, we confront not only the horror of war but the deeper moral question: What does it mean to possess power that exceeds our capacity for responsibility, imagination, and remorse?

Revisiting Günther Anders on the Anniversary of August 6

On August 6, we remember the bombing of Hiroshima a moment that redefined war, ethics, and human responsibility. The deaths of over 140,000 people resulted from political decisions. They also stemmed from a growing technological mindset that separates action from consequence. Few thinkers grasped this rupture more clearly than Günther Anders, a philosopher and anti-nuclear activist.

For Anders, Hiroshima was not merely a historical tragedy. It marked the birth of a new, ethically disoriented era. In this era, humanity became capable of destroying the world without fully realizing what it was doing.

The Promethean Gap: Ethics Without Imagination

In The Obsolescence of Human Beings, Anders defines the “Promethean gap” as the growing abyss. It exists between what humans can produce and what they can emotionally or morally comprehend. This gap, he warned, was most visible in the atomic bomb:

“We are able to do more than we are able to imagine. That is our condition. We are victims of this gap between our hands and our imagination.”
(Anders, 1956/2022, p. 27)

The act of dropping the bomb, then, became possible precisely because those involved could not fully imagine its consequences. The bomber pilot never saw the victims. The engineers never walked through the rubble. Responsibility was diffused into a system, a structure, a machine.

Claude Eatherly and the Banality of Technological Evil

Anders’ correspondence with Claude Eatherly is one of his most poignant works. Eatherly was the pilot who gave the all-clear signal for the Hiroshima bombing. While others celebrated their mission, Eatherly was consumed by guilt.

In a letter, Anders wrote to him:

“Your guilt consists in your being part of a system that makes it impossible to be innocent.”
(Anders, 1961/2019, p. 49)

Anders did not treat Eatherly as a war criminal. Instead, he saw him as a symbol of the new moral dilemma of technological civilization. In this dilemma, a person can participate in unimaginable destruction without intent or awareness. This is the ethical tragedy of modernity.

Auschwitz and Hiroshima: The Industrialization of Death

Anders often linked Hiroshima and Auschwitz, two seemingly different horrors. He viewed them under the same ethical framework. Both were bureaucratized forms of extermination. These were made possible by depersonalized systems.

“The gas chambers of Auschwitz and the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima were not carried out by sadists, but by specialists.”
(Anders, 1956/2022, p. 82)

This was a new kind of evil, not born from hatred, but from indifference, detachment, and the routinization of killing.

Imagination as an Ethical Imperative

Anders argued that ethics must begin with imagination—the ability to foresee the outcomes of our actions before they occur. Without imagination, power becomes blind, and destruction becomes mundane.

“We must practice a new categorical imperative: Act in such a way that the effects of your action are not beyond your imagination.”
(Anders, 1956/2022, p. 269)

In a nuclear age, this warning has lost none of its urgency. Now we are also in an age of AI, biotechnology, and ecological collapse.

Commemorating with Conscience

The anniversary of Hiroshima is not only a moment of mourning, it is a call to ethical responsibility. Günther Anders teaches us that technology is not neutral; it reshapes our moral landscape. We cannot separate what we create from what we owe to others and to future generations.

To honor the victims of Hiroshima is to ensure we never forget the ethical consequences. Progress without foresight can be dangerous. Power without conscience leads to harm. Innovation without imagination results in ethical neglect.

References

Anders, G. (2022). The obsolescence of human beings: Volume I: On the soul in the age of the second industrial revolution (C. Oster & C. Johnson, Trans.). Rowman & Littlefield. (Original work published 1956)

Anders, G. (2019). Burning conscience: The case of the Hiroshima pilot Claude Eatherly, told in his letters to Günther Anders, with a postscript for today (M. K. Dunning, Trans.). Paradigm Publishers. (Original work published 1961)

Sandkühler, H. J. (2013). From Auschwitz to Hiroshima: Günther Anders and the ethics of catastrophe. Historical Materialism, 21(1), 27–51. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206X-12341254

Ombrosi, R. (2022). Günther Anders: The philosophy of the atomic age. The Journal of the Philosophical Association of Japan, 74(2), 145–164. https://philosophy-japan.org/wpdata/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Ombrosi.pdf