Ethics Of Hans Jonas Philosophy Essay

Ethics Of Hans Jonas school of view EssayScience and school of thought though argon separate disciplines they co-exist with to each one other. Hans Jonas a prominent thinker non only has succeeded in bridging the sally of erudition and doctrine only if too has taken science in particular the Biology to the realm of philosophy. He has constructed philosophic Biology. He is everywherely cognize for his ethics of responsibility. As, one of the most prominent thinkers of 20th century, he has pen on diverse topics such(prenominal) as the philosophy of biology, ethics, social philosophy, cosmology, and Jewish theology with a suasion to understand piety as the adjudicate of our moral responsibility to sentry duty hu creationitys future. Jonass sterling(prenominal) mould, The Phenomenon of vitality sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy of phenomenology and existentialism. In this paper I view tried to adumbrate his thought on flavor philosophy or else thematically with a special reference to Phenomenon of Life. I shake off also touched upon his most celebrated ethics of responsibility briefly followed by my own reflections.1. Life and BiographyHans Jonas was a well-known Jewish thinker, an azoic and influential biomedical ethicist, and an equally early and influential philosopher of technology. Jonas was born in 1904 in Monchengladbach, studied under Martin Heidegger at the University of Freiburg before Hitler came to power and Heidegger became prime minister of the university. He received his doctorate in 1928 from the University of Marburg. In 1933 he fled Ger objet darty and, in 1964, publicly repudiated Heidegger because of his Nazi connections. Jonas taught in Jerusalem and Canada before becoming a professor at the newborn School for Social Research in New York in 1955, where he was chair of the philosophy department (195763) and Johnson professor of Philosophy (from 1966 until his retirement in 1976).1He Died in Februa ry, 1993 in New York. Jonass cargoner is gen datelly start pop outd into trey periods defined by the three works clean mentioned, exactly in reverse order studies of Gnosticism, studies of philosophical biology, and honest studies.2Jonass major works in English includeThe Gnostic Religion The Message of the Alien beau reportlandthe Beginnings of Christianity(1958),The Phenomenon of Life Toward a Philosophical Biology(1966), andThe Imperative of Responsibility In Search of Ethics for the proficient Age(1979).32. Philosophical Biology in The Phenomenon of LifeThe Phenomenon of Life is a collection of hobovass, written over a period of much than fifteen years. The book covers topics ranging from the metabolism of an amoeba to the meaning of immortality. There are discussions of mysterious religion, natural selection, gnosticism, DNA, ancient versus novel mathematics, cybernetics, the relative strengths and weaknesses of seeing, consultation, and tactile-feeling, the wor ld of images, theory versus practice, the images of man and the image of God. In this book he critiques the fundamental assumptions underlying upstart philosophy since Descartes, primarily dualism. Jonas is exactly right to argue that spirit does take up a distinct ontological category, and that the neglect of life in the Cartesian dichotomy of return and mind is an important element in the historical path that leads to modern nihilism.4The book deals with radical circumstances of life and self-interpretation of life in tender being. The themes dealt are non only of organic piece such as metabolism, sentience, motility, emotion, perception, imagination, mind etcetera but also moral and meta sensible themes.5In the preface of The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas identifies the work as an existential interpretation of the biologic facts. This description is significant Jonas would attempt to carry what was valu open in the existentialist philosopher approach forward to interpret an area that philosophers had long neglected the military personnel of facts virtually backup things about hunger, about nourishment, about growth and about death. The very proposition that philosophy ought to interpret facts demonstrates Jonass unorthodox orientation. For Jonas, the old office of labor amid the natural sciences, on the one hand, which deal in facts about record, and the gentlemans gentlemanities, on the other, which concern themselves with values and concepts salient to the mind or spirit-this old division of labor is precisely the problem that must(prenominal) be overcome in order to get nature right.3. Life, Death and the torso of Being and Philosophical Aspects of DarwinismJonas says that when human being began to interpret the nature of things he found life everywhere. It means the primitive man found life in everything. Jonas calls for the construction of a philosophy of nature as the Greek philosopher Aristotle did long ago. By this he means that ev ery philosopher must ease up to fields or to the working land. In this context his researchs are What is the digression amongst a human being, alive, and a corpse? What is thither in man besides chemicals that constitute the human form? Some readiness be quick to answer, a human being is not just a body he has a sense. scarcely what is meant by this? Is the soul something to be opposed to the body-a sort of spiritual substance that inha topographic points a body and lives out its own destiny apart(predicate) from that body? This was n both Jonass view nor Aristotles before him.6The position of these philosophers is closer to that which Friedrich Nietzsche expressed with his usual eloquence when he wrote in indeed Spoke Zarathustra Body am I, and soul so speaks a child.7And why should one not speak like children? But the awakened and knowing say body am I entirely, and aught else and soul is only a volume for something about the body. Nietzsche says that the soul is a wo rd for something about the body, we go through an fancy what that something is-its mortality, its relationship to death. An easy but significant answer to the question what is a nutrition thing? is this A financial backing thing is something that can and will die. Unlike non- breathing matter-including the nonliving matter that makes up living bodies-the alin concert living body has a provisionary sort of being. When death arrives, the extinction of an existing thing occurs. What is clearly asleep(p) in death is the bodys organization. Extinction of organism equals loss of organization. When the organism is alive, first, it is not a static thing, like the organization of marble into a statue or of wood and iron into a hammer. It is rather, a never ceasing, ongoing process. biologic science calls this process as metabolism.Jonas describes metabolism philosophically In this singular mode of being, the material parts of which the organism consists at a attached instant are to the penetrating observer only temporary, passing circumscribe whose joint material identity does not coincide with the identity of the whole which they enter and leave, and which sustains its own identity by the very act of unknown matter passing done its spatial system, the living form. It is never the akin materially and yet persists as its same self, by not remain the same matter.8Aristotles thought that all living beings nourish themselves, struck the idea of the mode of being as discovered by Jonas. A living thing does not simply exist-it exists by being eer active, constantly reaching out into the world to capture those material parts it take to preserve itself. Out of these captured elements, the organism builds itself anew or generates the energy ask for this building. Plants employ roots and leaves, fleshlys employ gills, lungs, teeth, stomach-and also, on the hunt, legs and arms, eyes and ears, attention and memory. As Jonas conceives it, life, from the most simp le to the most complex, is active and take aimful.9Organism and surround together form a system which determines the basic concept of life. Jonas remarks that the triumph which materialism achieved in Darwinism contains the germ of its own overcoming. Though by proving Darwins evolutionism it seems that mans metaphysical status is reduced due to his beast descent, in the realm of life as a whole mans dignity is restored. If man was the relative of physicals, then animals were the relatives of man, and in degrees bearers of that inwardness of which man, the most advanced of their kin, is conscious in himself.10But man remains distinct, because of self-consciousness.4. Is God a Mathematician?The third essay in The Phenomenon of Life considers the meaning of metabolism using the quote of Sir James Jeans. Jonas notes that a living being is one that is never the same from one moment to the near perpetual self-renewal through process. James remarks, From the intrinsic evidence of hi s creation, the Great house decorator of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.11 twain questions can be asked on this statement What does it mean and is it true? The question regarding the truth gives rise to another question take inly, is the great architect of the world is also the architect of amoeba. He must be both, or he is neither. For the amoeba is part of the universe and must be accountable for by its creative principle. The observation of James is the continuation of the long tradition from Platos Timaeus to Leibniz. Leibniz observes, Thus it is wonder fully made known to us how in the very existence of things a certain Divine mathematics or metaphysical chemical mechanism is employed and the determination of the greatest quantity takes mark.12When God calculates and employs thought, the world is made.13Kepler deeply imbued with the Pythagorean faith in the mathematical essence of things and the consequent unity in the world, said that God, too kind to remain idle, began to play the spicy of signatures, signing his likeness into the world, with the result that all nature and the graceful flip out are symbolized in the art of geometry. Galileo believed that the great book of the universe is written in mathematical language, using symbols such as triangles, circles and other geometrical figures. Philosophy is written in the book of the universe.14The final answer to the question, Is God a Mathematician? is a distinct No.5. Animal vs. PlantsJonas considers what differs from animal to prove i.e., motility, perception and emotion. The readiness to move using the evidence of perception leads to the idea of freedom. Plants possess immediacy in life surrounded by milieu and the organism animals are more(prenominal) separated than this being required to treat the environment as different from them to some degree at least. For the animal the environment is always at a distance, but for plants the adjacent surroundings in on e permanent context forms the environment. Motility, perception, and emotion make it likely for animals to have a genuine relation to a genuinely articulated world. These powers are, in fact, all manifestations of a common principle, tied to a common fact about animal life. The common fact is that the mobile animals live at greater distance from their relevant environments thereforethe common principleanimal life is mediated life, animal life is rooted in the opening between subject and intent, which gap is spanned by the distance-disclosing and distance-bridging powers of perception, locomotion, and appetite. Jonas argues, persuasively, that appetite is the heart of animality, prior to the more externally perceptible powers of perception and locomotion.Distance is requisite for zest, but it is desire which drives motion, guided by perception, to turn the over there into here and the not yet into now. It is desire which, while seeking to efface the spatial and temporal gaps, pa radoxically, maintains the gaps (and the objects across them) as matters of interest, even as the gaps are spanned under its spur. Jonas concludes The great secret of animal life lies precisely in the gap which it is able to maintain between immediate concern and mediate satisf reach.15Wakefulness and effort, want and fear, suffering and habit give depth to the animal soul.6. Cybernetics and Purpose tally to cybernetics, society is conference network for the transmitting, exchanging, and pooling of information. Jonas analyses the ideas of cybernetics and some differences between machines and organisms noting that machines act by feedback mechanisms whereas organism is refer in existing, this applies also to society where the cybernetic idea of information is empty. He draws out a crucial implication of the passionate nature of animal life. He shows the error in the efforts of cyberneticians and behaviorists to explain away the apparent purposive behavior of animals in terms of m echanical inputs and outputs and self-regulating feedback mechanisms. Exploiting the distinction between serving a purpose and having purpose, and using a marvelous specimen which compares a so-called self-steering torpedo and the same torpedo manned by a human pilot, he shows that all machine models of purposiveness fail because, distant living things, machines are not creatures of need. It is the concern of life with its own keep existence that qualifies incoming data as messages, and then only if they are relevant to the organisms purpose it is only such self-concern that energizes the active reply as an action fit to the organic purpose. Concern, or, in the higher animals, desire, appetite, and emotion, is more basic than the outward-looking functions of perception and locomotion which it holds together. Animals, no less than man, are teleological beings animals, no less than man, aim at their own good.167. Image-making and the Freedom of compositionHans Jonas sheds light on philosophical anthropology where he shows the specific difference of human being in the animal kingdom. He deliberates on the properties of an object which determines the image. fit to him the properties of image include171. The most obvious property is that of likeness. An image is an object that bears a plainly recognizable likeness to another object.2. The likeness is produced with intent. It is not the natural resemblances like mirror images, shadows, and the like.3. The likeness is not complete. It is not duplication. The tenderness of the likeness must be perceptible.4. The incompleteness of image-likeness includes omission and selection.5. Incompleteness also involves dissimilarity and alteration of selected features.6. The object of re confrontation is visual shape. Vision grants the greatest freedom to the mediacy of representation.7. The image is inactive and at rest, though it whitethorn depict movement and action. There is static presence because the represented, t he representation, and the vehicle of representation are different strata in the ontological constitution of the image.The properties required in a subject for the making or beholding of images involve the ability to behold something as an image and to behold something as an image and not merely as an object means also to be able to produce one. The requirement seems to be the ability to perceive the likeness. Animals perceive either sameness or otherness, but not both in one. sympathetic persons have the apprehension of similitude.8. Gnosticism, Existentialism and NihilismThe similarity and difference between two positions or movements of thought is one is conceptual, sophisticated and eminently modern i.e., existentialism and another from misty past, mythological, crude i.e., Gnosticism. Jonas wrote on Gnosticism which was a general movement in late antiquity in the early era of Christianity. The Gnostics, often understood to be Christian heretics, held the view that the cosmos is a prison for the human soul that the world is not Gods creation, but the work of lesser deities intent on keeping the soul imprisoned and apart from God that all attachments between a human being and the world, his appetites, aspirations and conscience, are expressions of ignorance that must be overcome through true association and that this companionship only comes as a gift from the savior beyond the world who can show the soul the way out.18The movement of modern knowledge called science has by a necessary complementarity eroded the foundations from which norms could be derived it has ruined the very idea of norm as such. To make his point fully emphatic, Jonas writes Now we shiver in the nakedness of a nihilism, in which near-omnipotence is opposite with near-emptiness, greatest cleverness with knowing least for what ends to use it.199. Heidegger and TheologyThis essay deals with how Martin Heidegger understands of Theology as interpreted by Jonas. Originally the Biblical word was equalized with the Greek logos. Philo Judaeus gives a reflection on Christian Theology through the etymology of the Biblical name Israel. It means He who sees God and Jacobs acquiring this name is said to represent the God-seekers progress from the stage of hearing to that of seeing, made possible by the miraculous conversion of ears into eyes. Philos views on knowing God rests on the Platonic supposition the truest relation to being is intuition, beholding. This eminence of sight gazed from the religious perspective enhances ones relation to God and also to the word of God. Philo quoting Exodus, All the pot saw the voice (20 18) comments Highly significant, for human voice is to be heard, but Gods voice is in truth to be seen. Why? Because that which God speaks is not words but works, which the eye discriminates better than the ear (De Decalogo, 47).20After Philo the Christian Theology underwent a turn from the original hearing to the call of the living in other words th e conversion of ears into eyes When we speak of Heidegger there is much secularized Christianity in his thought. The concepts like guilt, care, anxiety, call of conscience, resolution, authenticity-inauthenticity have a stringently ontological meaning. Theology is also a primal thinking though it is derived from a revelation. But for Heidegger Revelation is self-unveiling of being. Heidegger adopts more Judeo-Christian vocabularies in his philosophy such as guilt and conscience and call and voice and hearing and response and mission and shepherd and revelation and thanksgiving etc. He says save from the truth of being can essence of the holy be thought. yet from the essence of the holy is the essence of deity to be thought. Only in the light in the essence of deity can that be thought and said which the word God should name.21Heideggers formulation can be put in this way, philosophical thinking is to being as theological thinking is to the self-revealing God. Hence theology shou ld be primal thinking concerning God.2210. Jonass design on BiologyOrganisms are, of course, as much a part of the physical universe as atoms and planets and cosmic nebulae. An organism is a whole and not just a collection of simpler parts. Nature is not a place of purposes but rather of bodies filling the void of empty space.23A living organism including human being-is a being that must always be at-work in order to stay the whole that it is. What Jonas adds to this account is an existentialist philosophers focus on the role of death. The existentialists, including Heidegger, think only about the consciousness of death, the prescience of death that characterizes humanitys existence. But Jonas thought about death as a biological event. Mankind is not the only creature who walks in the valley of the shadow of death. All life is fragile and provisional all life is wrested moment by moment from the threat of non-being. The key ontological divide is not between human beings and the rest of nature-it is between living nature and that which does not live and, so, cannot die. The meaty feature of all life, then, is, first, the primacy of form over matter-the ontological persistence of an individual through material change-and, second, the purposeful action of the living individual to keep itself in being against the threat of non-being. The imputation of purpose to all life processes is perhaps the core of Jonass heresy. It is essential, for Jonas, those categories which modern philosophers and scientists have systematically applied only to mankind-purpose, intention, interest, care-should be seen as present throughout the organic world. To be alive is to exhibit an interest in continuing to be. Jonas formulates this at one point by saying that, through metabolism, life says yes to itself.24Jonas characterizes the essential property of all living things as a kind of freedom. reinforcement things are free in that they exist independent of, though not apart fro m, their material.2511. The Imperative of ResponsibilityJonas is best known for his neo-Kantian ethics of prudent caution in the face of the awesome power of modern technology, specially the power of modern biotechnology, including genetic engineering. He offers answer to the question what makes mankind unique?, Man is the only being known to us who can assume responsibility. The fact that he can assume it means that he is liable to it. This capacity for taking responsibility already signifies that human being is subject to its imperative the ability itself brings moral obligation with it. But the capacity for taking responsibility, an honest capacity, lies in mans ontological capability to choose wittingly and willingly between alterative actions. Responsibility, therefore, is complimentary to freedom it is an acting subjects incumbrance of freedom.26Jonas tells us Responsibility exists with or without God and, naturally even more so, with or without an earthly court of justice . Responsibility is sown into the fabric of Being. Jonas argues that it does and that we must learn how to think of the planet that sustains our being and the God-like nature that evolution has-wondrously and mysteriously-realized in our species as vulnerable things that must stay our hand and constrain our choices.27According to Jonas, we must consult our fears and not our hopes when understanding technological ventures that can have a potentially devastating impact on what it means to be human (and therefore ethical). The Imperative of Responsibility centres on social and ethical problems created by technology. Jonas insists that human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future. He formulated a new and distinctive supreme principle of morality Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.28Francis Bacon states that nature can be commanded only by being obeyed.29Critical Remarks and ConclusionHans Jonas, a pupil of Heidegger, departs from his mentors work and reaches out into the depths of the deeply thinking mans way of understanding The Phenomenon of Life . The philosophy of Jonas is more than challenging in this technological era. I found it relevant for many reasons.a. His division of living and non-living beings is a new thinking which goes beyond anthropocentric division of man and rest of nature. This new aspect brings in the terrain of plants and animals to human life. They are nothing less in terms of living beings. Only non-living beings have neither birth nor death. This thinking paves the way for new ethical imperatives, respect for life and deep ecological concerns.b. His application of philosophy to science especially to biology is relevant. He tries to interpret nature in a holistic sense which upholds the meaning to life, proper use of technology etc. He acknowledges that human existence cannot be grasped without acknowledging radically different kinds of relation.c. The philosophy of Hans Jonas found in The Phenomenon of Life is a hard reading and bit complicated to understand in a first attempt. But as one goes or digs deep there are gems of thought and concrete experiences. The life and thought is worth studying for a present student of philosophy. His philosophy is a clarion call to study and do philosophy as well. It places humans as responsible citizens of cosmos to safeguard nature and surroundings. Thanks to his thought.