ABSTRACT

Jonas found himself confronted with the paradox of the invisible and imperceptible catastrophe and tried to convince us that the risk is major and quite real. Jonas is aware of dealing with the heart of Cassandra's paradox: Priam's daughter knows but that knowledge remains vain, for her fellow-citizens won't listen to her and she fails to convince them. Jonas, who preaches moderation, hardly fears - and even seeks - to exert this effect on threatening technological and scientific processes. Pascal's whole argument consists in making a wager he describes as finite to obtain an infinite good: eternal life. Cassandra is right and Pascal wrong, for the terms of probability are reversed: no matter how infinitesimal, the stakes are infinite compared to a gain which might prove to be null. For Jonas, fear appears to be a major element of the theory of responsibility in confronting an invisible danger.