Hans Jonas' Ethics Of Responsibility

This thesis first introduces Hans Jonas' life as a philosopher, ethicist, and a Germany-born Jewrish, then in order presents 3 periods of Hans Jonas' scholarly activities: the first period of early Christianity and late Greek research, the second research period of natural philosophy, ontology of life and nature as a whole; and then, the third of Ethics of which mainly concerned with the term of responsibility.The appearance of Responsibility Ethics is on close contact with contemporary technical era. Technological application has become indispensable part of human action, and has been beneficial to human undoubtedly. But meanwhile it has also been changing from original instrument and means into the purpose itself, so there come out risk and crisis. Ethics should have been used as such a tool that control the power of technology, but traditional ethic systems could not pursue the goal due to their flaws. That is why Hans Jonas put forward his ethical principals of "Responsibility Imperative".According to Hans Jonas, everybody is on duty of the existence and continued development of Human as a whole, has to consider how to act in order to ensure the persistent existence of Man. As the argumentation of "Responsibility Imperative", Jonas distinguishes it with traditional ethics: the latter one focuses on vertical dimension, ignores situations of contemporary and concerns ultimate top-level Good, while the former one has horizontal dimension, focuses on every special situation of contemporary, and adjusts itself in order to be fit for the environment that changes all the time. The latter one can be termed as formal responsibility, while the former one, as a functional structure about power and knowledge, is a kind of essential responsibility.During the comparative analysis of Natural Responsibility and Political Responsibility, Jonas summarizes three main characters of responsibility, they are Wholeness, Continuity and Future.This thesis makes chief critique after mainly introducing Jonas' Ethics of Responsibility, including the author's unclear standpoint between Anthropocentrism and Non-Anthropocentrism, conflict between Deontology and Utilitarianism, absence of object of responsibility due to whole-based position, and so on. In the last part, this thesis narrates the scholar and political influence of Jonas' ethical theory.