American Prometheus

by Kai Bird

As their conversation turned philosophical, Oppenheimer stressed the word “responsibility”— and when Morgan suggested he was using the word in an almost religious sense, Oppenheimer agreed it was a “secular device for using a religious notion without attaching it to a transcendent being. I like to use the word ‘ethical’ here. I am more explicit about ethical questions now than ever before—although these were very strong with me when I was working on the bomb. Now, I don’t know how to describe my life without using some word like ‘responsibility’ to characterize it, a word that has to do with choice and action and the tension in which choices can be resolved. I am not talking about knowledge, but about being limited by what you can do. . . . There is no meaningful responsibility without power. It may be only power over what you do yourself—but increased knowledge, increased wealth, leisure are all increasing the domain in which responsibility is conceivable.”