Description
Book SynopsisHans Jonas (1903-1993) was one of the most creative and original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth-century. This volume offers a retrospective of Jonas's life and works by bringing together historians of modern Germany, Judaica scholars, philosophers, bioethicists, and environmentalists to reflect on the meaning of his legacy today. From a historian of religions, who wrote a path-breaking monograph on Gnosticism, Jonas turned to the philosophy of nature, extending his existential philosophy and phenomenological analysis to include all forms of life. Unique among twentieth-century Jewish philosophers, Jonas argued for the possibility of a genuinely symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature, which he believed had been suppressed by modern technology. Jonas spoke against the human domination of nature on the basis of Jewish sources, especially the Bible and Lurianic Kabbalah, and he was among the first to define the ethical challenges that modern technology poses to humanity.
Table of ContentsCONTENTS Preface Understanding Jonas: An Interdisciplinary Project Hava Tirosh-Samuelson Introduction Ethics after Auschwitz: Hans Jonas’s Notion of Responsibility in a Technological Age Richard Wolin PART ONE: A GERMAN-JEWISH INTELLECTUAL Chapter One Hans Jonas’s Position in the History of German Philosophy Vittorio Hösle Chapter Two Hans Jonas in Marburg, 1928 Steven M. Wasserstrom Chapter Three Ressentiment—A Few Motifs in Hans Jonas’s Early Book on Gnosticism Micha Brumlik Chapter Four Hans Jonas and Research on Gnosticism from a Contemporary Perspective Kurt Rudolph Chapter Five Pauline Theology in the Weimar Republic: Hans Jonas, Karl Barth, and Martin Heidegger Benjamin Lazier Chapter Six Despair and Responsibility: Affinities and Differences in the Thought of Hans Jonas and Günther Anders Konrad Paul Liessmann Chapter Seven Ernst Bloch’s Prinzip Hoffnung and Hans Jonas’s Prinzip Verantwortung Michael Löwy Chapter Eight Zionism, the Holocaust, and Judaism in a Secular World: New Perspectives on Hans Jonas’s Friendship with Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt Christian Wiese Chapter Nine The Immediacy of Encounter and the Dangers of Dichotomy: Buber, Levinas, and Jonas on Responsibility Micha H. Werner Chapter Ten Hans Jonas and Secular Religiosity Ron Margolin PART TWO: THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE AND THE THREAT OF EXTINCTION: THEORETICAL BIOLOGY, BIOETHICS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Chapter Eleven Hans Jonas and Ernst Mayr: On Organic Life and Human Responsibility Strachan Donnelley Chapter Twelve Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis of Bioethics in Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Leon Kass Lawrence Vogel Chapter Thirteen Cloning and Corporeality Bernard G. Prusak Chapter Fourteen Reason and Feeling in Hans Jonas’s Existential Biology, Arne Naess’s Deep Ecology, and Spinoza’s Ethics Martin D. Yaffe Chapter Fifteen Caretaker or Citizen: Hans Jonas, Aldo Leopold, and the Development of Jewish Environmental Ethics Lawrence Troster Chapter Sixteen Jonas, Whitehead, and the Problem of Power Sandra B. Lubarsky Chapter Seventeen “God’s Adventure with the World” and “Sanctity of Life”: Theological Speculations and Ethical Reflections in Jonas’s Philosophy after Auschwitz Christian Wiese Chapter Eighteen Infants, Paternalism, and Bioethics: Japan’s Grasp of Jonas’s Insistence on Intergenerational Responsibility William R. LaFleur PART THREE: RESPONSES AND REFLECTIONS Chapter Nineteen Reflections on the Place of Gnosticism and Ethics in the Thought of Hans Jonas Kalman P. Bland Chapter Twenty On Making Persons: Philosophy of Nature and Ethics Frederick Ferré Chapter Twenty-One Philosophical Biology and Environmentalism Carl Mitcham Chapter Twenty-Two More on Jonas and Process Philosophy Robert Cummings Neville Hans Jonas: Life and Works Christian Wiese
