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Full Description
Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was one of the most important German-Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. A student of Martin Heidegger and close friend of Hannah Arendt, Jonas advanced the fields of phenomenology and practical ethics in ways that are just beginning to be appreciated in the English-speaking world. Drawing here on unpublished and newly translated material, Lewis Coyne brings together for the first time in English Jonas's philosophy of life, ethic of responsibility, political theory, philosophy of technology and bioethics.
In Hans Jonas: Life, Technology and the Horizons of Responsibility, Coyne argues that the aim of Jonas's philosophy is to confront three critical issues inherent to modernity: nihilism, the ecological crisis and the transhumanist drive to biotechnologically enhance human beings. While these might at first appear disparate, for Jonas all follow from the materialist turn taken by Western thought from the 17th century onwards, and he therefore seeks to tackle all three issues at their collective point of origin. This book explores how Jonas develops a new categorical imperative of responsibility on the basis of an ontology that does justice to the purposefulness and dignity of life: to act in a way that does not compromise the future of humanity on earth.
Reflecting on this, as we face a potential future of ecological and societal collapse, Coyne forcefully demonstrates the urgency of Jonas's demand that humanity accept its newfound responsibility as the 'shepherd of beings'.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
I. Jonas's Philosophical Project
II. The Man and His Work
1. The Gnosticism of Modernity
I. The Gnostic Principle
II. Nihilism, Ancient and Modern
III. The Scientific Revolution
IV. The Age of Technology
V. The Baconian Ideal
2. The Philosophy of Life I: The Organism
I. Dualism, Materialism, Integral Monism
II. The Phenomenological Approach to Organismic Being
III. Self-Organization
IV. Behaviour
V. The Nisus of Being
3. The Philosophy of Life II: The Scala Naturae
I. Aristotle After Darwin
II. Plants
III. Animals
IV. Humans
V. Being is One
4. Values and the Good
I. The Axiological Dimension of Teleology
II. Species and the Biosphere
III. The Good of Being
IV. Moral Traditions
5. New Dimensions of Responsibility
I. Ethics, Old and New
II. The Temporal Horizon
III. Responsibility for the 'Idea of Man'
IV. Global and Intergenerational Ethics
V. Duties to Non-Human Life
6. The Politics of Nature
I. The Nature of Politics
II. New Rules for Collective Action
III. Farewell to Utopia?
IV. Rival Interpretations of Jonas's Politics
V. Freedom and the Republic
7. Toward a Richer Bioethics
I. The Dignity of the Person
II. Human Beings as Means
III. The Threshold of Life and Death
IV. The Future of the Human Condition
Conclusion
I. Humanity: The Shepherd of Beings
II. Carrying the Fire
Notes
Bibliography
Index
