Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas (1903 - 1993) is a historian of the Gnosticisme and a German Philosophe. He was pupil of Husserl, Heidegger and Bultmann with Hannah Arendt. In 1928, It makes a thesis of doctorate on the gnosis. Very early conscious of the danger Nazi, it leaves the Germany for the Palestine and returns to fight there as a soldier of the Jewish Brigade under British command. His/her mother dies in a camp

It is with its ethical for the technological age that Hans Jonas before did everything himself to know, in particular beyond the philosophical circles. This ethics is developed in its principal work, the Principle responsibility (1979).

In the philosophy which it states towards the end of its life, it wants to bring an answer to the problems raised by the technicized civilization, namely the problems Environnement to, the questions of the genetic Engineering, etc According to him, the enormous capacity which is conferred on the man by the technoscience constitutes a problem to which must answer, in the man, a new form of responsibility. This one is not to understand like an attitude, but rather as a properly human faculty that any man is held to exert.

The " responsabilité" jonassienne has nothing to do with the responsibility which is born from the property, or of the obligation to repair the wrong makes with others, which humanity recognizes since of the millenia like a principle of natural justice. Not, this " responsabilité" there would prohibit the man from undertaking any action which could endanger either the existence of the Future generations, or the quality of the future existence on ground. This is why, before using a technology, it would always owe " assurer" that any apocalyptic possibility is excluded. By this regulation, Hans Jonas claims to require a preliminary knowledge to act it which one can obtain only by this action itself. Thus those which take it with serious oppose systematically to certain progress, not by hostility of principle to the development, but because they see only the risks associated with certain actions, and not those their alternatives.

Hans Jonas is very known in Germany, where the Principle Responsibility is the book of " philosophie" more diffused. It is still little known in the French-speaking countries. L inspired the " Precaution principle " imposed in the French substantive law via the European directives, various national laws (an article in law NRE), the inclusion of the Charter of the environment in the Constitution of Ve République…

Quotations

“Acted so that the effects of your action are compatible with the Permanence of a life authentically human on ground” in the Principle responsibility
“Our time dedicates a worship with the defect. ” lack refers it -->

Works

the phenomenon of the life - Towards a philosophical biology
Power or impotence of subjectivity
Between nothing and Natural eternity
and responsibility
an ethics for nature
Evolution and freedom
For an ethics for the future
right to die
the Concept of God after Auschwitz
the principle responsibility. An ethics for technological civilization (1979) - French translation ED. stag 1990

See too

Rene Dubos -- Sustainable development -- Social responsibility of the companies -- Precaution principle -- ecological Print

écologisme and the : category: Running of the environnementalism
Harms, Klaus: Hannah Arendt und Hans Jonas. Grundlagen einer philosophischen Theology der Weltverantwortung. Berlin: WiKu-Verlag (2003). ISBN 3-936749-84-1. (of)

External bonds

Jonas Center (German)
Bibliography of Hans Jonas by Claudia Neubauer
Study of Denis Hake
Master's paper: '' The ethics of the responsibility and technological Utopia: a study of the work of Hans Jonas ''

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