Genetic Manipulation of Plants: A More-than-Human Ethical Challenge

Abstract

The central argument of this article is that the genetic manipulation of plants raises profound ethical questions that cannot be adequately addressed within a purely anthropocentric framework. Drawing on Hans Jonas’s philosophy of responsibility, the article argues that modern biotechnology transforms living organisms into objects of technological intervention, thereby challenging traditional distinctions between subject and object in the domain of technology. Because plants are living beings that possess their own intrinsic good and play a fundamental role in the biosphere, their genetic manipulation must be evaluated not only in terms of human utility but also in relation to ecological integrity, intergenerational responsibility, and the preservation of life’s evolutionary continuity. The article proposes an approach that remains largely unexplored in the international literature: interpreting plant genetic engineering through the lens of Jonasian ontology of life and the ethics of responsibility, thereby moving the debate beyond the limits of traditional anthropocentrism.

1. Introduction

The application of technology to the field of biology constitutes the latest and most dangerous form of human intervention in the realm of nature. For the German philosopher Hans Jonas, this new technoscientific stage confronts humanity with a profoundly metaphysical problem, insofar as these interventions alter essential characteristics of being as such. In describing the stages of technological progress, as analyzed in the article Toward a Philosophy of Technology1, specifically in the section on “The Material Content of Technology,” Jonas draws attention to the fact that all previous stages of technological advancement “were based on physics and had to do with what man2 can put to his use” among the existences of inanimate nature [1] (p. 41). For him, biology introduces something fundamentally new, namely the fact that living beings (including human beings themselves) have now become objects of technoscientific intervention. With this new step, we would be “on the verge of a technology, based on biological knowledge and wielding an engineering art which, this time, has man himself for its object” [1] (p. 41), something unprecedented in the history of human power. The danger inherent in these procedures emerges “with the advent of molecular biology and its understanding of genetic programming” [1] (p. 41), transforming what had previously been merely a “theoretical possibility” into a real possibility and, above all, a “moral possibility.” For this reason, Jonas argues that “nuclear biology” inaugurated a new chapter in the history of technology: “just as nuclear physics opened up an entirely new dimension of physics for technological use, so too does the newest nuclear biology” [2] (p. 176).

What is precisely at stake is the fact that technology has become a tool for the manipulation of life at a moment when the very notion of life—whether human or extra-human—undergoes the “metaphysical neutralization” [1] (p. 41) produced by modernity, whose effects included stripping nature of any notion of end, good, or value. Thus, guided by the idea of a quantifiable nature subordinated to the notion of “bare matter” [3] (p. 7), modernity disseminated an ontology according to which all existence came to be understood through the model of pure matter, deprived of the defining features of life: “from the physical sciences there spread over the conception of all existences an ontology whose model entity is pure matter, stripped of all features of life” [3] (p. 9).

In this way, Jonas points to one of the great dilemmas of modernity in its relationship with nature: the “ontology of death” [3] (p. 11) rendered inert matter the only thinkable reality [4], not merely relegating the organism’s interiority to the domain of what cannot be scientifically known, but, more radically, transforming inert matter itself into the criterion for interpreting life. The result of this process, according to the philosopher, is that life remained an enigma, always interpreted according to the materialist criteria that came to guide modern science. This would constitute the pan-mechanistic mark of modernity, whose consequences opened nature to unlimited exploitation and manipulation at every level: as inert matter deprived of interiority, purpose, and value, nature came to be regarded as merely one “thing” among others, according to the logic of the “indifference of matter, which is a neutral character” [3] (p. 12). This neutralization of nature, therefore, found its premises confirmed by evolutionary theory: “the anti-essentialism of prevailing theory, which knows only of de facto outcomes of evolutionary accident and of no valid essences that would give sanction to them, surrenders our being to a freedom without norms” [1] (p. 41). It is upon this idea that the technoscientific claim to “unlimited freedom” is grounded, a claim that came to characterize what Jonas calls the “Baconian program” [5] (p. 140): “Under the generalized banner of freedom of thought and expression, and grounded in the distinction between word and deed, as well as, naturally, in the eminent value of truth, scientific research too was able to claim for itself an unlimited freedom, in a strange polyphony with the new promise of tangible benefit (in Francis Bacon), which contradicted the assertion of theoretical insularity” [2] (p. 93).

Thus, the metaphysical-ontological neutralization of nature led to a claim to freedom that came to directly accompany the “modern utopia” [5] (p. 15) grounded in technological progress, in which nature becomes merely an opportunity for the exercise of technological power [6]. The problem, Jonas emphasizes, is that this neutralization places us in a zone of danger: “since the same evolutionary doctrine of which genetics is a cornerstone has deprived us of a valid image of man, the actual techniques, when they are ready, may find us strangely unready for their responsible use” [1] (p. 41). Interpreted through the lens of indifference, nature was progressively opened up to new layers of exploitation, deprived of the elements necessary for its ontological evaluation while simultaneously subjected to the new “factual techniques” that biotechnology came to offer and develop. At this point, Jonas argues, the power to act finds us stripped of the capacity to evaluate how and to what extent such action—a power grounded in knowledge—ought to remain subject to duty.

Not only was the human being deprived of an essence, nature, or proper identity, but nature itself had already undergone this assault beforehand, so that the interpretation of life also came to be shaped by the anti-essentialism of the dominant theory. For the philosopher of life, microbiology, together with its discoveries and inventions, represents a step that is “the twofold one of physical feasibility and metaphysical admissibility” [1] (p. 41), both because it introduces genetic alterations into beings and because, in doing so, it calls into question the very idea of being as inherited from the evolutionary process. Manipulation, in this case, appears as a power resulting from the development of forms of knowledge that prepare us to use technological tools, but not to evaluate their consequences in terms of preserving that which, as heirs, we should also assume responsibility for safeguarding.

Among the beings that first, and most decisively, suffered from this manipulation are plants. While it is true that indirect genetic manipulation of plants has been carried out for millennia by farmers who selected and domesticated plant species, a new chapter opened in the nineteenth century with controlled crossbreeding and the combination of lineages, and in the twentieth century with direct genetic manipulation through molecular3 [7,8,9] genetic engineering. For this reason, in the first part of this article, we shall analyze the development of plant genetic manipulation within the broader context of contemporary biotechnology, highlighting the scientific and historical assumptions that enabled the vegetal kingdom to become a privileged field of technological experimentation.

Next, considering Hans Jonas’s philosophy, we shall examine the transformation of the living organism into a technological object, showing how genetic engineering alters the traditional relationship between technology and nature and introduces new forms of unpredictability and irreversibility that become dangerous in the long term. In the third part, we shall discuss the problem of the proper good of plants, articulating the Jonasian notion of the teleology of life with the idea of the intrinsic value of living organisms in order to analyze the ethical implications of these transformations. We shall argue that the genetic manipulation of plants demands an ethics of responsibility capable of moving beyond anthropocentrism and of recognizing the proper value of vegetal forms of life.

2. The Genetic Manipulation of Plants

Anticipating some of the advances in biology in the field of genetic analysis and engineering, Jonas points to the emergence of a science that no longer merely seeks to understand life but instead acquires the capacity to reprogram it. Jonas refers to the “decoding of the genetic code” [2] (p. 196) as a central step in this process: a genetic mechanism which, once fully analyzed and definitively deciphered in its structure, made possible the transcription of the final text of life. Drawing on a linguistic metaphor, Jonas speaks of DNA in terms that remain contemporary, namely, as a text or code composed of information determining the characteristics of organisms. The advances of molecular biology, especially since the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953, have thus made it possible not only to read this code, but also to edit, recombine, and rewrite it. Modern genetic analysis thereby transforms life into something technically manipulable. Modifying genes, selecting traits, or creating new genetic combinations becomes a concrete possibility whose developments have since generated countless challenges in practices that include the creation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, the entire field of agricultural biotechnology experiments, genetic therapies, among other processes. What, in 1970, was merely a theoretical possibility became, from the twentieth century onward, an everyday scientific and technological reality, ultimately affecting every sphere of life. Jonas is concerned with the fact that the technological power to manipulate life grows much faster than our moral capacity to decide how and when to use such power and that this, insofar as these powers expand, also demands new ethical contours4. For Jonas, few doubt “the right [to] use” these powers and, in such terms, they live intoxicated by the very “will for boundless power” [1] (p. 36), guided by a scientific mentality that tends to assume that everything which is technically possible ought to be realized: “judging by the rhetoric of its prophets, the idea of taking our evolution into our own hands is intoxicating even to many scientists” [1] (p. 41).

The idea of taking the reins of our own evolution means that human beings could cease to be merely products of natural evolution and instead become conscious agents of the biological transformation both of their own species and of other forms of life. This, as we shall see more clearly below, creates a new kind of ethical responsibility, because its consequences may be irreversible, affecting entire ecosystems, compromising their balance, and definitively altering what has until now been understood as “nature.”

The genetic manipulation of plants fits perfectly within this debate because it involves direct technological intervention in the structure of life, with long-term ecological consequences, precisely the kind of problem that Jonas identifies as an ethical challenge. As we intend to demonstrate, this perspective results from a misunderstanding of nature and of the phenomenon of life in general, but above all of vegetal life in particular, given that among living beings, plants have suffered most from the pan-materialist outlook characteristic of modern science. Considered mere things or “machines” [10], plants are “the poor relatives of biology” [11] (p. 12), but above all “the great forgotten beings in the history of philosophy” [11] (p. 12), frequently relegated to the status of subordinate or negative forms of life [11] (p. 17), ethically neutral beings upon which biotechnology could act indifferently. As such, genetic interventions in plants have been grounded in a view that conceives them as productive platforms useful for generating food, fibers, industrial molecules, and pharmaceuticals. This instrumental vision emphasizes plants as “factories” whose metabolism can (and should) be redesigned for human purposes, while forgetting what truly matters to them as living beings that ecologically participate in the planetary balance. Plants are ultimately reduced to technological platforms for experiments that, beginning with them, later reached animals, from extra-human beings to humans themselves.

Calvo [12] (p. 25) describes this process as “Plant blindness”5 [13], understanding such blindness as intentional, insofar as seeing always involves filtering. Coccia [14] (p. 11), in turn, argues that philosophy has “neglected” plants “from the very beginning, more out of contempt than distraction,” and that, for this reason, they constitute “the open wound of metaphysical snobbery” produced by “the cosmic tumor of humanism.” Marder, for his part, draws attention to the same problem by showing how, in modernity, the plant ceased to be considered worthy of philosophical questioning: “If animals have suffered marginalization throughout the history of Western thought, then non-human, non-animal living beings, such as plants, have populated the margin of the margin, the zone of absolute obscurity undetectable on the radars of our conceptualities. Particularly after the scientific paradigm gained its hard-won independence from theologico-philosophical dogma in early modernity, philosophers, for the most part, refrained from problematizing vegetal life, which they entrusted to the care of botanists and, later on, geneticists, ecologists, and microbiologists. The being of plants was no longer question-worthy; it did not present itself as a problem to those who took the time to contemplate it, let alone to those who made immediate use of the fruit or the flower, the root, or parts of the tree trunk” [15] (p. 2).

It was no coincidence that, among living beings, plants became the first objects of genetic manipulation, especially when one considers the issue of GMOs, as part of a convergence of ontological, scientific, economic, and ethical factors that made the vegetal kingdom the privileged initial field of modern biotechnological experimentation. From a scientific perspective, plants possess characteristics that ultimately facilitated genetic experimentation, such as relatively short reproductive cycles, considerable biological plasticity, and a long tradition of artificial improvement carried out by traditional agriculture since the emergence of the earliest civilizations, when domestication [16,17] and artificial selection already constituted, in a certain sense, a pre-modern form of genetic intervention, albeit performed indirectly and empirically. In modernity, in turn, molecular biology came to allow direct intervention in genetic material, transforming plants into a natural extension of this history of biological manipulation initiated by farmers over the course of the last twelve millennia.

Moreover, the view of plants as objects—that is, as merely mechanical and material beings—contributed to genetic intervention being perceived as less problematic than the manipulation of animals or human beings. Within the traditional hierarchy of life, plants occupied a position regarded as less sensitive or even morally insignificant, which diminished social and philosophical resistance to the earliest experiments in genetic engineering. Culturally and economically treated as manipulable objects or mere biological devices intended to produce food, fibers, or energy [15,18], plants became the first organisms to be extensively genetically manipulated by human beings.

Throughout this entire trajectory, plants were treated as manipulable biological resources, which contributed to their becoming the privileged experimental field of biotechnology [15]. From this perspective, vegetal genetic manipulation is not merely a technical phenomenon, but also a reflection of a particular conception of nature in which certain living beings are integrated into the productive logic of humanity as mere biological instruments.

This process dates back at least to the nineteenth century, when Mendelian genetics and experimental botany were developed, and techniques of controlled crossing and hybridization began to be widely employed to produce agricultural varieties that were more productive or resistant to disease [19]. In the twentieth century, the so-called Green Revolution intensified this process through the creation of high-yield varieties of wheat and rice associated with fertilizers and intensive irrigation [20]. Beginning in the 1980s, molecular biotechnology introduced a new level of intervention, since in 1983 the first transgenic plants were produced in laboratories when scientists succeeded in inserting foreign genes into tobacco plants using the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens6 [21], which naturally transfers DNA into plant cells [7,9]. This breakthrough paved the way for vegetal genetic engineering until, in the 1990s, the first genetically modified crops commercialized on a large scale emerged, such as glyphosate-tolerant soybeans, insect-resistant Bt corn, and genetically modified cotton. These plants were purportedly developed to increase agricultural efficiency and reduce losses caused by pests or herbicides [22,23]. More recently, gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 have made it possible to modify plant genes with remarkable precision, aiming at the development of varieties supposedly more resistant to droughts, diseases, and climate change, as well as plants capable of producing pharmaceutical or industrial compounds [24,25,26].

Now, all these procedures carry serious ethical problems and environmental, political, cultural, and economic risks. On the one hand, many specialists [27,28] have pointed out that the dissemination of genetically uniform varieties tends to reduce the genetic diversity of cultivated plants, thereby increasing the vulnerability of agricultural systems to pests, diseases, and environmental changes. Furthermore, critics [29] of these processes emphasize that the replacement of local varieties with standardized cultivars may provoke genetic erosion and the irreversible loss of biological resources. Another aspect is political-economic in nature and concerns technological dependence and corporate concentration, since the genetic engineering of seeds is frequently associated [30,31] with patents and intellectual property regimes that concentrate power in the hands of a few biotechnology corporations, leading to increased technological dependence among farmers and to the reduction of the autonomy of local agricultural systems. A FAO document [32] draws attention to the risks these processes pose to food systems and food security [33], since the concentration of agricultural systems around a small number of genetically similar varieties ultimately increases global vulnerability to systemic failures, phytosanitary crises, or climate change. Khoury et al. [34] (p. 4001) characterized this process as an “increasing homogeneity” of plant life7 [35].

Another troubling element concerns unpredictable ecological impacts. Snow et al. [36] (p. 377), for example, drew attention to the fact that “GEOs that present novel traits will need special scrutiny with regard to their environmental effects.” For the authors, “possible risks of GEOs could include: (1) creating new or more vigorous pests and pathogens; (2) exacerbating the effects of existing pests through hybridization with related transgenic organisms; (3) harm to nontarget species, such as soil organisms, non-pest insects, birds, and other animals; (4) disruption of biotic communities, including agroecosystems; and (5) irreparable loss or changes in species diversity or genetic diversity within species. Many potential applications of genetic engineering extend beyond traditional breeding, encompassing viruses, bacteria, algae, fungi, grasses, trees, insects, fish, and shellfish” [36] (p. 377).

These concerns are part of the risks that the introduction of modified genes into agricultural ecosystems may generate in terms of ecological effects that are difficult to predict. Added to this are the warnings raised by Gould [37] and Heap [38], for whom the intensive use of genetically modified plants resistant to herbicides or insects may accelerate evolutionary processes that produce resistant pests and so-called “superweeds,” thereby requiring the increasing use of chemicals or new technologies. All of this, as Jonas aptly observed, ultimately transforms nature into a vast technological platform and a field of experimentation, insofar as biotechnology tends to treat living organisms such as plants merely as programmable systems, reinforcing an instrumental view of life. To this must also be added the fact that such processes may lead to the displacement of traditional agricultural knowledge, since plant biotechnology frequently replaces traditional agricultural practices of seed selection and agroecological management, resulting in the loss of local knowledge accumulated over generations, as Shiva [39], for example, has strongly emphasized.

3. The Living Being as a Technological Object

One of Jonas’s major concerns relates to the novelty of biotechnology with regard to its object. In the article “Biological Engineering—A Preview”8 [40], we may read: “Up to the present, all technology has been concerned with lifeless materials (most typically metals), shaping them into nonhuman artifacts for human use. The division was clear: man was the subject, ‘nature’ the object of technological mastery (which did not exclude that man became mediately the object of its application)” [41] (p. 141).

In the German version of the text [2] (p. 101), Jonas continues this passage by drawing attention to the transition from living species to the human being. For him, “the advent of biological technology, which, extending in an unplanned manner to the ‘plane’ of living species, and in principle also to the plane of the human species, signals a radical departure from this clear division, and even a rupture of potentially metaphysical significance: man may become the direct object of his own architecture [Baukunst], and certainly in his hereditary physical constitution” [2] (p. 164).

For this reason, the possibility of the genetic manipulation of life represents a profound historical transformation in technology and in the ethical implications that arise from it. It alters the traditional character of technology insofar as biotechnology breaks with the classical division between the animate and the inanimate. According to Jonas, with the emergence of genetic engineering and biological manipulation, technology no longer acts solely upon inert matter but begins to intervene directly in the domain of life itself (plants, animals, and eventually the human being), thereby turning living beings into direct objects of technical intervention. This constitutes a rupture of an ontological and/or metaphysical nature, since the very biological foundation of life may now be redesigned, modified, or reconstructed.

Jonas lists eight aspects that distinguish organic technology from the older mechanical technology. The first concerns the difference between mechanical fabrication and biological intervention, since traditional technology produced fully planned artifacts out of inert matter, whereas the new biotechnology merely modifies structures already existing in nature. Such artifacts “are neither invented nor produced de novo, but as found, are made the object of inventive improvement” [41] (p. 143). The second aspect concerns the different relationship between the producer and the substrate, for in traditional technology the material is passive, whereas in biology the “material” is a living system endowed with its own activity, so that technical intervention takes place in cooperation with the organism’s own dynamics: “thus we have determination by intervention only, not by building” [41] (p. 143). The third aspect is the radical reduction of predictability, since, unlike mechanical engineering (which is oriented toward greater predictability), biotechnology involves enormous uncertainty, for “the untold complexity of the given determinants with their self-functioning dynamics, the number of unknowns in the design is immense” [41] (p. 143). All of this means that, in the case of bioengineering, the experiment itself becomes a real action (the fourth aspect), since “no such substitution of the ‘as if’ for the serious is possible in biological—especially human—engineering. For a valid experiment, it must operate on the original itself, the real thing in the fullest sense. What intervenes between the initiation and conclusion of the experiment is the actual life of individuals and even whole populations. This nullifies the distinction between mere experiment and definitive action. The comfortable separation of the two disappears, and with it the innocence of mere experiment. The experiment is the real deed, and the real deed is an experiment” [41] (p. 143).

The fifth aspect analyzed by Jonas concerns the irreversibility of biological interventions: unlike errors in machines, which can be corrected, this is not the case with biological modifications: “Its deeds are irrevocable” and “When its results become visible, it is already too late to do anything about them. What is done is done” [41] (p. 144). This means that the effects of genetic interventions become hereditary (the sixth aspect) and, more than that, genetic engineering acts upon processes of heredity and produces effects on future generations. Unlike machines, in which reproduction does not exist, the genetic intervention of life acts indirectly through time, “into the genetic sequence, where its effects will appear in the next generation and then propagate through subsequent generations” [41] (p. 144). This aspect leads to another (the seventh aspect), which concerns the power to influence the future: the power of the living over those who are yet to be born, whether human or extra-human.

The final aspect is connected to the ends of genetic engineering, since it moves from extra-human living beings to the human being itself, thereby blurring the very purpose of intervention: what is the criterion for so-called genetic improvement? As we have seen, when it comes to the genetic engineering of plants, the criterion of “improvement” is usually defined according to human utilitarian parameters, especially those related to productivity, agricultural efficiency, and economic value. In general, a plant is considered improved when it produces more food per hectare, shows greater resistance to pests, diseases, or herbicides, or tolerates adverse environmental conditions such as drought or salinity. These are all criteria that disregard the plant’s own good or its effectiveness in terms of continuity of life and environmental balance. What is always at stake is human benefit, which ignores the value of plants and, even more fundamentally, the intrinsic good that every plant is.

Another frequent criterion is the standardization of agronomic characteristics that facilitate large-scale cultivation, mechanized harvesting, and preservation during transportation and storage. In many cases, the goal is also to increase nutritional value or modify specific properties of food, such as color, texture, or ripening time. However, these criteria are always defined from the perspective of the needs of the agro-industrial system and the market, rather than from an ecological standpoint or from the perspective of the plant’s own good as a living organism. For this reason, genetic “improvement” often signifies nothing more than an intensification of the economic utility of cultivated species, resulting in an increased ethical disregard for the very being of the plant itself, potentially entailing a loss of genetic diversity, greater technological dependence, and the simplification of agricultural ecosystems. In this sense, the concept of improvement proves to be less an intrinsic biological criterion than a normative category guided by human interests in the production, control, and exploitation of nature.

4. The Good of Plants

Now, for Jonas, it is not only human good that must be considered by technology, but also the good of the other living organisms subjected to its interventions, since human well-being itself depends upon the well-being of other species. For the author, the idea of the good is related to the notions of end and value. He argues that the most primordial fact that a being is alive—that is, that it exists—testifies to its purposiveness (in the form of an immanent teleology) and addresses an appeal to the human being in terms of duty. This is because “all beings that are sentient and moved by impulse are not only an end of nature, but an end in themselves, namely, their own end” [42] (p. 161). For Jonas, “being itself can justify duty.” [42] (p. 151).

It is therefore necessary to begin by distinguishing the idea of the good from that of value. According to the author, the good “is not identical to the concept of value—or, if one prefers, it designates the difference between the objective status and the subjective status of value (or, more briefly: between value in itself and value ascribed by someone)” [42] (p. 155). The good possesses an objective status; that is, it is characterized as a “good in itself” [42] (p. 149/158), an intrinsic good belonging to the very being that possesses it insofar as it is alive, whereas value is something relational, established in connection with the human being: “From a linguistic point of view, ‘the Good,’ in comparison with ‘value,’ possesses a greater dignity of being-in-itself: we tend to understand it as something independent of our willing and our judgment. ‘Value,’ by contrast, is readily associated with the questions ‘for whom?’ and ‘how much?’; the word derives from the sphere of evaluation and exchange. It therefore designates, first and foremost, merely a measure of willing—more precisely, of willingness-to-expend—and not of duty. I establish something as an end because it has value for me, or something has value for me because, by virtue of my needy nature, it is already posited as an end prior to any choice: in action, insofar as it is free amid the competition among ends, I once again assume as my own end the end of nature.” [42] (p. 164).

The good, therefore, is life itself, and respecting it belongs among the tasks that must be assumed by the human being, the only one capable of doing so. In the case of the plant, precisely because it lives, it possesses (or rather, is) an intrinsic good that is independent of its value in relation to human good. More than that, by the mere fact that human good depends upon the good of other species, preserving the good of the plant (that is, its life) becomes a task directly connected to the preservation of human good itself. Human beings must therefore assume a duty of protection, a duty that arises “from an immanent claim of that which is good in itself and ought to realize itself9” [42] (p. 157). At this point, Jonas is quite explicit: “in pursuing ends, or in having purposes, as we now wish to admit, nature also posits values; for whatever end is in fact pursued, its attainment will be a good and its frustration an evil” [42] (p. 157). Since the good is something intrinsic, attaining it does not depend upon any human evaluation, but solely upon the very fact that the effort to achieve it succeeds—that is, that the organism finds the conditions necessary for its own survival.

Although Jonas does not develop a specific ethics of plants, his philosophy allows us to recognize that vegetal life possesses characteristics that justify a distinct ethical reflection. Plants are not merely one more example of living beings sharing the general teleological structure of life, but they constitute a unique mode of existence. Unlike animals, plants are radically rooted in place, continuously exposed to environmental conditions that they cannot escape through locomotion. Their permanence requires highly sophisticated forms of metabolic regulation, growth, adaptation, communication, and ecological interaction. Precisely because they sustain themselves through an uninterrupted exchange with soil, water, light, atmosphere, microorganisms, and countless other species, plants express in a particularly evident way the relational character of life emphasized by Jonas. Their good therefore cannot be reduced either to human utility or simply to the generic good shared by all living beings, but must be understood according to the specific teleological organization through which vegetal existence realizes and preserves itself.

Every plant, simply because it lives, seeks the conditions for its own survival and thereby bears witness to its self-affirming tendency: in its case, to orient itself toward ends means nothing other than orienting itself toward itself as its own end, in search of the conditions of survival. Given that Being is better than non-Being, then “in every purpose Being declares itself for itself and against nothingness” [42] (p. 160). Thus, “the mere fact that Being is not indifferent to itself makes its distinction from non-Being the fundamental value of all values; the first ‘yes,’ in principle” [42] (p. 160). The plant is a being whose good consists of the preservation of its life, and it falls to the human being to protect—which also implies not obstructing—the conditions for its realization. No biotechnological intervention, therefore, should prevent the plant’s interest in itself from being fulfilled through its own characteristic vital striving. Every plant carries and bears witness to a “positive interest” [42] (p. 161), which reveals itself as a “permanent choice of itself” [42] (p. 161), and in plants as well this process unfolds through a constant effort to “continually postpone death in the act of self-preservation, which bears the mark of the self-affirmation of Being” [42] (p. 162). The dilemma is that, with the powers of biotechnological intervention, the human being has acquired the status of a threat: “This ‘yes,’ which operates blindly, acquires binding force through the conscious freedom of the human being who, as the supreme outcome of nature’s teleological labor, is no longer merely its continuer but, endowed with the power that arises from knowledge, may also become its destroyer” [42] (p. 152).

In these terms, the human being is the one who bears responsibility because he is the one who can, through technological advancement, destroy being itself. It falls to humanity to “assume this ‘yes’ in its will and impose upon its power the ‘no’ to non-being” [42] (p. 162).

Now, this striving of the plant ultimately provides evidence of a degree of interiority (Jonas makes use of the word “mind”10) that characterizes all living organisms. Likewise, when we refer to plants as possessing initial stages of interiority, it does not attribute to them consciousness or subjective experience comparable to that of animals or human beings. Rather, following Jonas’s philosophy of life, interiority is understood as a graduated ontological characteristic that accompanies life from its most elementary expressions onward. Metabolism already manifests a primordial form of self-concern, insofar as every organism continuously distinguishes itself from its environment and actively strives to preserve its own existence. In plants, this interiority is expressed through their autonomous organization, their teleological orientation toward self-maintenance, growth, reproduction, and ecological interaction, rather than through perception or consciousness in the phenomenological sense. The expression therefore refers to the intrinsic self-relatedness of vegetal life and should not be understood as implying subjective awareness.

This stands in contrast to the understanding of the plant as mere “matter” [3] (p. 7), which marked the “ontology of death” [3] (p. 11) characteristic of modern science, including biology, as described above. Jonas, on the contrary, conceives life as marked by a spiritual “principle of continuous gradation,” linking plants, human and extra-human animals: “the province of ‘soul,’ with feeling, striving, suffering, enjoyment, extended again, by the principle of continuous gradation, from man over the kingdom of life” [3] (p. 57). Within the history of this gradation, the plant constitutes the first stage (primarily through metabolism, regarded by Jonas as the first step of freedom11), from which sensitivity, perception, emotion, movement, and rationality unfold. Thus, the interiority that reaches its highest expression in the human being—as spiritual life and as an act of ethical freedom and dominion over nature—has no other point of origin than precisely “at the beginning of life,” and in a manner “co-extensive” with it.

A clarification is warranted here. The ethical consideration owed to plants does not imply an absolute prohibition against their use by human beings. Hans Jonas’s ethics of responsibility does not require the suspension of all forms of intervention in nature, but rather demands that technological power be exercised in accordance with the preservation of the conditions that make life possible. Human beings necessarily depend upon plants for food, shelter, medicine, and countless other dimensions of existence, a dependence that itself reveals the profound solidarity linking humanity to vegetal life. The ethical problem therefore lies not in the use of plants as such, but in forms of intervention that disregard their intrinsic good, reduce them exclusively to technological resources, or compromise the long-term continuity of vegetal species. From this perspective, the object of moral concern is not each individual plant considered in isolation, but the preservation of the integrity, diversity, regenerative capacity, and evolutionary continuity of plant life as a constitutive dimension of the biosphere.

5. Ethical Implications: The Appeal to Responsibility

The apparent moral ease with which plants have generally been regarded as ethically neutral is illusory precisely because vegetal beings, as forms of life, although lacking consciousness or sensitivity comparable to that of animals, possess initial stages of interiority and constitute fundamental elements of the biosphere, forming the basis of virtually all ecological chains. For this reason, they are goods in themselves and possess a value that demands respect and even opens the possibility for a new theory concerning their own moral rights. In the author’s words: “It is at least not senseless anymore to ask whether the condition of extrahuman nature, the biosphere as a whole and in its parts, now subject to our power, has become a human trust and has something of a moral claim on us not only for our ulterior sake but for its own and in its own right” [5] (p. 8).

It also happens that it is precisely for this reason that the vegetal becomes a privileged field for reflecting upon the limits and responsibilities of human intervention in life. In this way, the genetic manipulation of plants concerns not only agriculture or food production but also calls into question the way humanity understands its relationship with nature and with vital processes. From a Jonasian perspective, the real problem is not merely whether we can genetically modify plants, but whether we possess the ethical wisdom and prudence necessary to assume the consequences of deliberately transforming the biological foundations of life—and whether we would even have the right to do so, precisely in relation to a being that remains, to a great extent, unknown even to scientific knowledge itself12.

All the aforementioned risks are closely connected to Hans Jonas’s concerns in The Imperative of Responsibility [5] and in its practical counterpart, developed in Technik, Medizin und Ethik [2], in the sense that plant genetic engineering should not be understood merely as a technique, but as an ontological intervention into the dynamics of life, insofar as the genetic manipulation of plants alters evolutionary and ecological processes that surpass the human sphere, thereby requiring an ethics capable of overcoming an exclusively human-centered conception of the good and including instead the good of all forms of life. In analyzing the ethical urgency imposed by technology—namely, the need to transcend the anthropocentric limits of traditional ethics—Jonas states: “now the entire biosphere of the planet, with all its abundance of species, in its newly revealed vulnerability to excessive human intervention, claims its share of the respect owed to everything that is an end in itself—that is, to all living beings” [2] (p. 46). It should therefore be emphasized that the concern is no longer solely with the human being, but with all living beings, including plants, which are regarded as bearers of an end in themselves. Indeed, it is biotechnology itself that imposes this new ethical threshold, since, by expanding human power over life, it demands an ethics oriented toward the future of the biosphere as a whole, within which the human being is only one part among others. From this perspective, plants can no longer be treated merely as resources but must instead be understood as expressions of the teleology proper to everything that lives and, above all, as bearers of a purposiveness that presents itself as a good in itself, upon whose flourishing human beings themselves depend.

This means that vegetal life possesses a teleological interiority that demands moral evaluation: to what extent is it legitimate to genetically redesign plants for human purposes? If vegetal life participates in the same ontological continuity as animal and human life, then genetic manipulation becomes an expression of the reduction of life to a mere technical object, thereby negating its ontological value. At this point, it becomes useful to invoke “comparative futurology” [5] (p. 26) and the “heuristics of fear” [5] (p. 71) as part of the prudent procedures required by the magnitude of contemporary risks. Faced, for example, with the ecological unpredictability of genetically modified organisms, we must adopt an ethics of radical precaution, since genetic engineering creates irreversible ontological effects upon the very being of each vegetal organism, within a field in which scientific knowledge offers few predictive guarantees capable of protecting the future of vegetal life—something that now emerges as a central concern of ethics. If contemporary technological capitalism ultimately transforms everything into merchandise, then it falls to ethics to recover the intrinsic value of vegetal life forms in order to protect them from the risks arising from such procedures. To this end, ethics must regard plants as moral beings, given that all forms of life possess value and that it falls to the human being—due both to the more advanced stage of human evolution and to the dangers humanity itself has produced—to guarantee the continuity of authentic vegetal life in the future.

An ethics capable of protecting plants from the risks involved in genetic manipulation must therefore be a non-anthropocentric ethics—that is, an ethics that recognizes that the “the exclusive right of man to human respect and moral consideration was shattered precisely through his acquisition of an almost monopolistic power over the rest of life”, for “as a planetary power of the first order, he can no longer think solely of himself” [2] (p. 46). At bottom, Jonas recognizes the growing “increase in interhuman solidarity” [2] (p. 46) together with that “solidarity of interest with the organic world” [2] (p. 136), which binds human responsibility to the preservation of extra-human life. It is no coincidence that, according to the author, “it was necessary for the threat to the whole, the very principles of its destruction, to become visible in order to make us discover (or rediscover) our solidarity with it: an unsettling idea” [2] (p. 48). Thus, it is the expansion of power and the emergence of risks and dangers into the foreground that reveal the urgency for ethics to assume responsibility for the good of all forms of life: “This expanded vision links the human good with the cause of life in its totality, rather than opposing it in a hostile manner, and grants extra-human life its own right. Its recognition means that every arbitrary and unnecessary extinction of species becomes, in itself, a crime, entirely apart from the identical counsels of enlightened self-interest; and it becomes a transcendent duty of humanity to protect the least renewable and most irreplaceable of all ‘resources’: the unimaginably rich genetic pool formed over eons of evolution. It is the excess of power that imposes this duty upon human beings; and it is precisely against this power—therefore, against humanity itself—that such protection becomes indispensable” [2] (p. 47).

Human responsibility, therefore, must include the protection of what is most vulnerable—in this case, precisely, plants. If the genetic manipulation of vegetal life entails so many risks, as we have seen above, insofar as it represents an increase in power “to a point where it becomes palpably dangerous to the whole scheme of things,” then “it extends man’s responsibility to the future of life on Earth, now helplessly exposed to misuse of that power” [2] (p. 48). It falls to ethics to call for responsibility in the use of such powers, which implies exercising prudence and modesty, as well as being capable of foreseeing, with the greatest possible accuracy, the risks involved in the continuation of these procedures. For Jonas, this is a responsibility that “becomes, for the first time, cosmic” [2] (p. 48), because it places in human hands the care for the ecological order and balance of the planet.

For Jonas, the great ethical concern must now turn, with genetic engineering, toward a radically new object—one for which no previous ethics has prepared us and before which, given the degree of danger involved, we should appeal to a final “resource” and impose “voluntary restraints”: “That the possibility of a voluntary restraint appears here from the very outset of questioning the problem may serve as a measure of the singularity of the dangers that fully mature and socially emancipated biological engineering could bring upon our heads. Let us at least be warned. The ultimate resources of our moral reason are required in order to deal with what is the thorniest of all objects—unfortunately, at a time when ethical theory is more uncertain of itself than ever before” [2] (p. 163).

In speaking of “voluntary reins,” Jonas appeals to the responsibility of biotechnological agents themselves, who must resist the intoxication of utopias grounded in the illusion of progress, in the name of a mature freedom capable of stepping back before the gravity of what is at stake. By invoking “reins,” Jonas emphasizes the idea that the technological agent must himself be capable of acting prudently and allowing his actions to be guided by responsibility.

6. Conclusions

The analysis developed throughout this article has sought to demonstrate, drawing on Hans Jonas, that the genetic manipulation of plants is not merely a technical problem but an ethical challenge of far-reaching ontological and ecological significance. As we have seen, by transforming living organisms into objects of technological intervention, contemporary biotechnology profoundly alters the historical relationship between humanity and nature, shifting the domain of technique into the very sphere of life itself. In light of Jonas’s philosophy, this shift implies recognizing that the growing power to manipulate vital processes demands a corresponding expansion of human moral responsibility.

Indeed, it is not difficult to foresee that this challenge will become even more complex in the coming decades, since the integration of biotechnology, genetic editing, and advanced artificial intelligence systems promises to significantly accelerate humanity’s capacity to design and modify plant organisms. We already know that machine-learning algorithms are beginning to be used to analyze vast genomic databases, predict advantageous genetic combinations, and identify traits that may be introduced or modified in plants with greater efficiency. In this context, artificial intelligence may transform genetic improvement into an increasingly automated process, capable of designing plant varieties with previously calculated properties.

While, on the one hand, such technologies may contribute to addressing real problems such as climate change, food scarcity, and environmental degradation, on the other hand, they enormously expand the scope of human power over evolutionary processes and, consequently, the risks involved therein. The possibility of designing plants with unprecedented characteristics, reorganizing metabolic systems, or introducing new genetic pathways means that human intervention may come to operate directly upon the very biological architecture of ecosystems. In this context, ecological, evolutionary, and social risks become even greater and more difficult to foresee.

From the perspective of the ethics of responsibility, this requires a new form of technological prudence, since, according to Jonas, the greater the power to manipulate life becomes, the greater the caution that must govern its exercise. The history of biotechnological progress demonstrates that the combination of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence may generate interventions whose temporal and ecological scale far exceeds human predictive capacities, especially when we consider the complexity of the ecological networks within which plants are embedded.

In this sense, the principal contribution of Hans Jonas’s philosophy remains profoundly relevant and can be applied to the case of plants in support of a vegetal ethics. His proposal for a future-oriented ethics, grounded in responsibility for the conditions that sustain the continuity of life, offers a fundamental criterion for evaluating the use of these technologies. The true challenge lies not merely in determining whether we can genetically modify plants, but whether we ought to do so, and to what extent such interventions respect the integrity of life and the stability of the biosphere. Faced with the convergence of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and the globalized economy, it becomes urgent to rethink the ethical limits of genetic manipulation. Plants can no longer be treated merely as technological platforms or as simple productive resources. As forms of life possessing an intrinsic good and participating in the evolutionary continuity of the biosphere, they demand an ethical consideration that transcends instrumental logic.

Thus, the future of the genetic manipulation of plants will depend not only on scientific advances but also on humanity’s capacity to develop an ethics capable of guiding the responsible use of these powers. Only an ethics of responsibility, conscious of the vulnerability of life and of the irreversibility of certain technological interventions, will be able to ensure that new biotechnological powers do not become a threat to the ecological balance of the planet—something that is increasingly becoming a growing danger.