Hans Jonas
| Hans Jonas | |
|---|---|
| Born | 10 May 1903 Mönchengladbach, Rhine Province, German Empire |
| Died | 5 February 1993 (aged 89) New Rochelle, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater |
University of Freiburg University of Berlin University of Heidelberg University of Marburg (PhD, 1928) |
| Notable work | The Imperative of Responsibility |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School |
Continental Philosophy Existentialism Lebensphilosophie |
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Main interests
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Bioethics, Political Science, Religion |
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Influences
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Hans Jonas (10 May 1903 – 5 February 1993) was a German-born philosopher, from 1955 to 1976 the Alvin Johnson Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Jonas's writings were very influential in different spheres. For example, The Gnostic Religion, based on his early research on the Gnosis and first published in 1958, was for many years the standard work in English on the subject of Gnosticism. The Imperative of Responsibility (German 1979, English 1984) centers 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".
While The Imperative of Responsibility has been credited with catalyzing the environmental movement in Germany, his work The Phenomenon of Life (1966) forms the philosophical undergirding of one major school of bioethics in America. Murray Bookchin and Leon Kass both referred to Hans Jonas's work as major, or primary, inspiration. Heavily influenced by Martin Heidegger, The Phenomenon of Life attempts to synthesize the philosophy of matter with the philosophy of mind, producing a rich existential understanding of biology, which ultimately argues for a simultaneously material and moral human nature.
His writing on the history of Gnosticism revisits terrain covered by earlier standard works on the subject such as Ernesto Buonaiuti's Lo gnosticismo: storia di antiche lotte religiose (1907), interpreting the religion from an existentialist philosophical viewpoint. He was one of the first philosophers to concern himself with ethical questions in biological science.
Jonas's career is generally divided into three periods defined by his three primary works, but in reverse order: studies of gnosticism, studies of philosophical biology, and ethical studies.
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