Nihilism And Responsibility

Hans Jonas starts his philosophical study from the research of ancient Gnosticism, then turn to the biological philosophy and finally to the Ethics. These multiple themes focus on the predicament of human existence. According to Jonas, it’s not human being but all living organisms that should be topic of Life Philosophy. Through the inherent relation among human, other forms of life and the natural world, his philosophy expands the modern understanding of the life. In the face of the excessive development of modern technology, his "responsibility to nature and human future generation" is to save the environment for the whole life community based on the human nature and dignity. In this sense, Jonas’s philosophy system is constructed around the theme of life.By the methods of Heidegger’s existentialism, Jonas discovers metaphysical dualism is the basic principle of Gnosticism:the common divisions and oppositions between the universe and the God, the world and human, body and soul led to Gnosticism betrays the devout attitude to comos since ancient Greek period, and further the ontology of acosmism leads to antinomism. As a result, the world without divine, life without foundation, behavior without taboos, in short, people were pushed into the abyss of nihilism. Reading Heidegger’s philosophy by Gnosticism principle, Jonas finds Existentialism and the modern western civilization as a whole still share with Gnosticism the same dualism.Unique experience in the war make Jonas unsatisfied with the two kinds of life view:mechanical materialism and idealism, the former too much emphasis on the material aspects of human being, while the latter focus too much on the consciousness and spirit. Established by the Cartesian dualism of body and mind, modern life views lost the complete understanding of the world, in which man and nature, body and soul are harmony and unity. Dominated by the mechanical materialism, modern science of simplify the life activities as the physical and chemical processes, which in fact deprived of the difference between living and nonliving, it also justifies modern technological manipulation of life including human life. Because of excessive emphasis on consciousness and spirit, Idealism completely apart human from other forms of life and the rest of natural world, then the foundation of human exsistence, moral rule of human behavior lost its objective basis. Jonas points out that the most basic biological fact that every organism against death through metabolism, maintain own existence, constitutes a powerful retort to the dualism preset.Combining and transforming Aristotle’s teleology and Darwin’s theory of evolution thought, Jonas completes his philosophy of life. First, he endows metabolism with ontological meaning, and called it "needful freedom". All life forms, from the simplest to the most complex, have the purpose of survival through metabolism. Jonas extends Heideggerian concept of "existence" and of sorg. So, he endowes subjectivity with all forms of life. As the cradle of life, the inorganic nature, therefore, also has intrinsic value, the whole world has become a community of life. In the new world picture, meaning and value are no longer human’s monopoly, but from the objective world order, the division of "is" and "ought" in the modern value beliefs therefore no longer valid. Jonas has been restored the classical "the great chain of being" which destroyed by the ideas, by Cartesian dualism, Everything around the world occupies different position in the value chain according to its evolutionary sequence.Jonas believes that modern technological civilization is a resurgent Gnosticism. The spirit deprivation of physis since the Scientific Revolution is very close to Gnosticism rebellion against the devout attitude of cosmos in ancient Greek, and the basic feelings under the technological survival, such as alienation, loneliness and fear, are similar to Gnosticism emotion. One-sided and excessive developing modern technology not only threatens the human civilization lasting survival, but also puts human dignity at risk.Responsibility ethics tries to explore new principle of living in technological era and to restore image of human being. With the increasingly growing technological power, modern people tend to seek economic development in spite of natural resources exhaustion, in so doing, we almost make future human existence impossible. At the same time, inspired by the success of natural science and technology, people begin to expand the life altering, including human life, humanity is eroded. An imperative to ensure human race lasting survival and defending human dignity becomes of high importance. Jonas appeals to heuristic of fear, that is give negative influence of technology activities priority to its possible success in order to wake up the responsibility consciousness. He also puts forward the concept of prudence, temperance rather than that of blindly optimistic and excessively risky as the guidline of technological enterprise.Facing the risk of ecological disaster, Jonas’s Life Philosophy and Ethics of Responsibility provide us a deep insight. His philosophy offers one of the most systematic and challenging rejoinders to the Heideggerian Existentialism in particular, and to the spirit of the twentieth century as a whole.