Hans Jonas: Life, Technology and the Horizons of Responsibility

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 fully appreciated in the English-speaking world. Drawing on unpublished and newly translated material, Lewis Coyne brings together, in a English-language volume, Jonass philosophy of life, ethic of responsibility, political theory, philosophy of technology and bioethics. Coyne argues that the aim of Jonas's philosophy is to confront three problems inherent to modernity: nihilism, the ecological crisis and the transhumanist drive to biotechnologically modify human beings. While these might at first appear disparate, Jonas demonstrates that all in fact follow from the materialist turn taken by Western thought in the seventeenth century. Coyne then shows how Jonas tackles these issues at their collective point of origin. On the basis of an ontology that does justice to the purposefulness and dignity of life, Jonas develops a new categorical imperative of responsibility: to act in a way that does not compromise the future of humanity on Earth. The book concludes with a reflection on two possible futures: one of ecological and societal collapse, following from our present course of action, and another in which the biosphere and all that depends upon it is saved humanity having accepted its newfound responsibilities as the shepherd of beings.