Hans Jonas
Climbing from the living organism up to ethics: reading in the smallest a freedom and an end, so as to ground in being itself a duty toward a humanity that does not yet exist.
German · 1903 – 1993
Born in Mönchengladbach into a Jewish family, a pupil of and , he devoted his dissertation to Gnosticism, under the latter's supervision and alongside the theologian Rudolf Bultmann: it led to Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (1934), then to the English synthesis (1958). In exile from 1933, he fought in the Jewish Brigade of the British army, learned after the war that his mother had been murdered at Auschwitz, then taught in Canada and, from 1955, at the New School for Social Research in New York. He broke with his teacher over the question of nature: (1966) founds a philosophy of the organism, and (1979), written in German, draws from it an ethics for technological civilization that became a reference in debates on , bioethics and the precautionary principle. (a 1984 lecture) extends this thinking into theology.
Technological power extends our responsibility to people who do not yet exist and can claim nothing: the first imperative is that there be a humanity, and its existence must never be put at stake.
Duty is grounded in being: wherever a living thing pursues its end, being prefers itself to nothingness, and what has value in itself demands to exist, whether we will it or not.
Purposiveness is not a projection of the mind onto a mute nature: from onward, the organism pursues its own end, and the human mind extends this inwardness instead of being an exception to it.
Our action has changed its nature: its effects have become cumulative, irreversible and planetary, and when we can no longer foresee them, the prophecy of doom must prevail over the prophecy of bliss.
The human being is neither the master of nature nor one living thing among others: as the only being capable of responsibility, it becomes the guardian of a nature its power has made vulnerable.
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Justification
respects science, whose biology nourishes his philosophy, but disputes that it is the only legitimate knowledge: ethics requires a metaphysics, and the modern taboo against it is a prejudice, not a result. Science, which banished ends and values from nature by methodological decision, can neither ground nor refute the good.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. II
Justification
With biotechnologies applied to human beings, technological power is no longer exercised on objects but on its own author. opposes human cloning in the name of a "right to ignorance": he fears the clone would be trapped in the social expectation of reproducing a life already known, without assuming that genetic identity determines a destiny. He rejects the project of abolishing death or prolonging life indefinitely: mortality is the price of life and the condition of its renewal through birth.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I · "Laßt uns einen Menschen klonieren", in Technik, Medizin und Ethik (1985) · "The Burden and Blessing of Mortality" (1992)
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's imperative forbids staking not only the existence but the essence of man: it presupposes an idea of man to be preserved. In "Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism", he reads his teacher's as a modern rupture between man and nature, akin to Gnostic dualism: a human being without a nature no longer has a norm. This idea includes the capacity for responsibility without being reduced to it: it also concerns the conditions of a human existence that would not be wholly manufactured.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I-II · The Phenomenon of Life, "Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism"
Justification
Against the modern dogma that no ought can be derived from an is, seeks to ground ethics in metaphysics, in three steps. Purposiveness is real in living beings; in purposiveness, being affirms its preference for itself against nothingness, which makes life a value in itself; and what has value in itself demands to be, which places an obligation on whoever can act upon it. The good is not a human preference, and the imperative that follows holds regardless of cultures. Jonas grants that this grounding is a metaphysical thesis rather than a proof: that, in his view, is the price of an ethics that does not give in to nihilism.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. II-IV · The Phenomenon of Life, "Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism"
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finds it "at least not senseless" to ask whether the condition of extra-human nature has a moral claim on us, "not only for our sake but for its own". His answer goes not through suffering but through purposiveness: in every living being that pursues its end, being says yes to itself, and that yes is a good in itself. It is a biocentric grounding, not a pathocentric one. The human keeps a priority, that of the sole subject of responsibility, but it does not reserve intrinsic value to humans.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I · The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. III-IV
Justification
distinguishes two sides of ethics: an objective side, the ground of obligation, which he seeks in being itself and not in the will of God, on which he refuses to make an ethics meant for all depend; and a subjective side, the feeling of responsibility, which moves the will without grounding the obligation. The kinship with the law of reason lies in the rational discovery of a universal demand; but the ground is ontological, not a formal law that reason would give itself, and it is against that he has the feeling arise from the object, from the good that demands to be.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. II, IV
Justification
ends with a critique of utopia, aimed at Marxism and at , author of : the ideal of a humanity at last fulfilled by technological abundance is dangerous, since it justifies the unlimited growth of power, and false, since authentic man has always already existed, in his greatness and his misery. sets against utopia a politics of preservation, while keeping a non-negotiable imperative.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. V-VI
Justification
Traditional ethics, observes, was an ethics of the neighbour and the present: its imperatives held between contemporaries, for acts with near effects. Modern technology changes the nature of action: its effects are cumulative, irreversible and planetary. Hence a new imperative, reformulating 's, which requires our acts to remain compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on Earth. Future generations cannot today assert their interests or enter into a relation of reciprocity; responsibility therefore rests on the vulnerability of what depends on us, on the model of parents toward a newborn. The pole takes up his formula almost word for word.
Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on Earth.The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I-II · The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. IV (the newborn as archetype of responsibility)
Justification
Against a modern science that banished final causes by methodological decision, argues that purposiveness is real in nature, and first of all in living beings. He interprets as an immanent purposiveness: the organism maintains its identity of form by ceaselessly renewing its matter, and thereby has an interest in its own being. Our experience, in which ends really move the body, forbids treating purposiveness as an illusion. He restores neither the life-force of nor a cosmic teleology of design.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. III ("On Ends and Their Status in Reality") · The Phenomenon of Life (1966)
Justification
starts from an observation: human action has changed its nature. Its effects are cumulative, irreversible, planetary, and modern technology has become an endless enterprise that pushes the Baconian ideal of mastery to the point where it threatens. He rejects its neutrality without preaching any return to the past. His answer is methodological: a , in which the evil we can imagine teaches us about the good to preserve, and a decision rule that gives the prophecy of doom priority over the prophecy of bliss whenever the very existence of humanity is at stake. A clearly critical value, short of the extreme of refusal.
The Imperative of Responsibility, preface, ch. I-II · The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. V (the Baconian ideal)
Justification
explicitly raises the question that ancient ethics could not raise: has the biosphere, now vulnerable to our action, been entrusted to our keeping? His answer makes the human being the guardian, not the owner, of nature: the power that threatens it is the only one that can preserve it. This guardianship does not make the human one living being among others, since it is the only being capable of responsibility and the first imperative remains that there be a humanity. The stewardship pole is, to a large extent, his very position.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. I
Justification
gives an affect a cognitive role: in the , we learn what must be preserved by picturing what we fear to lose, for we know much sooner what we do not want than what we want. This fear is not panic but a duty, cultivated by imagining distant effects; and the feeling of responsibility is the condition for obligation to become a motive for action. Judgment remains rational, but feeling is no longer its enemy.
The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. II, IV
Justification
After Auschwitz, where his mother was murdered, judges that God's omnipotence, goodness and intelligibility can no longer be held together. He gives up omnipotence: in a "myth" he presents as a hypothesis, God divested himself of his power in creating the world so as to let it be; he suffers with it and could not intervene, and it is now up to human beings to help him.
The Concept of God after Auschwitz (lecture 1984, publ. 1987)
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Attached to the Jewish tradition, nonetheless refuses to ground his philosophy in faith: must hold for everyone. When he speaks of God, it is in the form of a theological speculation he does not present as a proof. Theism, then, kept at a distance from the ethical argument.
The Concept of God after Auschwitz (lecture 1984, publ. 1987) · The Imperative of Responsibility, ch. II
Justification
In "Cybernetics and Purpose: A Critique" (1953), disputes that feedback machines have goals: cybernetics confuses goal-directed behaviour, observed from outside, with the pursuit of an end by a being to whom something matters. A target-seeking torpedo needs nothing; only a being that can cease to be and struggles to persist has ends. The inference to the thinking machine is solid, but remains an inference.
The Phenomenon of Life, "Cybernetics and Purpose: A Critique" (1953)
Justification
seeks to overcome the alternative between materialism and idealism, which he regards as the two fragments of a shattered dualism, through an ontology of psychophysical unity: inwardness and outwardness are two faces of the organism, and mind is not an ingredient foreign to organized matter. Against , he argues that this inwardness really acts. The kinship with dual-aspect monism is a reconstruction: the experience of the organism is the starting point of his interpretation of inwardness.
The Phenomenon of Life, introduction · Macht oder Ohnmacht der Subjektivität? (1981)
Justification
reverses the order of reductionist explanation: the higher illuminates the lower, and the organic whole, which keeps its form while changing its matter, is not the sum of its constituents. He differs from a pure emergentism: inwardness does not appear all at once at the top, it differentiates by degrees from the first living being onward.
The Phenomenon of Life (1966)
Jonas explicitly rejects all three options: materialism and idealism are for him the two halves of a shattered Cartesian dualism, and he seeks an ontology that goes beyond them, starting from the organism (The Phenomenon of Life, introduction).
The heuristics of fear: picturing the lasting worst before decidingExerciseFuture generations
When the stake is irreversible, heed the prophecy of doom before the prophecy of bliss.
For , we know sooner what we do not want than what we want: picturing the threat teaches us what deserves to be preserved. His is aimed first at collective choices about technology; this exercise draws from it a discipline for personal decisions whose effects last, giving particular weight to what would be irreversible.
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Lineages
See on the friezeAll lineages↑ Influences received
- Reacts againstBaconJonas reacts against the Baconian ideal of knowledge aimed at mastering nature for the good of humanity: fulfilled beyond all expectation, it becomes the threat that ethics must contain.Read
- ReinterpretsKantJonas reformulates Kant's categorical imperative for the technological age: no longer the consistency of the maxim, but the compatibility of the effects of action with the permanence of humanity.Read
- Reacts againstBlochThe very title of The Imperative of Responsibility (Das Prinzip Verantwortung) answers Bloch's Principle of Hope, and its last chapters criticize it: Jonas sets an ethics of preservation against the utopia of a humani…Read
- Reacts againstHeideggerA pupil of Heidegger, Jonas breaks with his existentialism, indifferent to nature, to found an ontology of the living and an ethics of responsibility toward future generations.Read