Categorical, Hypothetical and Ontological Imperatives

Emmanuel Kant gelled the idea that humans experience imperatives of two kinds: Hypothetical and Categorical. The hypothetical roughly implies "how you should be if you want to achieve a particular outcome" vs the categorical implying "how you must be, given what/who you are". In Hans Jonas' "The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age" I found the first (obvious to me) reference to the term "Ontological Imperative" "It is this Ontological Imperative, emanating from the idea of Man, that stands behind the prohibiiton of the va-banque gamble with mankind. Only the idea of Man, by telling us *why* there should be men, tells us *how* they should be. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5953283.html