Introduction

Like Hans Jonas itself specifies it as of the first lines of the concept of God after Auschwitz , this text constitutes a “ piece of frankly speculative theology ”. In other words, Jonas will be devoted to a reflection on the concept of God, and thus will propose its reflections on the way in which one must design God after the Holocauste: in what this tragedy particularly does oblige us it to modify the concept which one usually has of God? Devoting itself to such theological reflections, Jonas, as he notices it itself, is opposed for example to Kant for which null rational theology is not possible (one cannot know God, it is only one Idea of the reason) or to the Positivisme (according to Carnap, the statements Métaphysique S are stripped of direction: in fact only imitation-statements do nothing but express one Lebensgefühl, i.e. a feeling of the life). Is this then to deliver itself to irrationalism, the divagations of pure and irrational belief? What will make Jonas is not to in no case an irrational exercise, inspired by its religious belief, it is not an act of renouncement of the reason and rationality: it is precisely philosophically that it will be devoted to an analysis of the concept of God.

It should right now be noted that it is not generally that it will examine the concept of God, but detailed: it is after Auschwitz . The question is thus to know what this top of the human horror, or rather of inhumanity, can teach us on the concept of God. How to give an account of the evil? How to reconcile the concept of God with the report of inhumanity, violence, the extreme horror without precedent which the massive extermination of Juif S by the Nazi S constitutes? One cannot allot the existence of the evil any more to the inaccuracy or the fidelity of the Jewish people, the belief or impiété, the fault and his punishment… Why Auschwitz? Which is the direction of this massacre? Why the Jews were exterminated? The key question is in fact this one: “is Which this God who could let make? ”. Indeed, we are in right to ask us, if God exists, how it should be included/understood this being if it lets perpetrate such atrocities. Jonas is Jewish, therefore (it will however make it in the continuation of the text, without however being delayed there since it is not its goal) the assumption does not emit here that took place because God does not exist. Faithful to its religious conviction, Jonas to say: “ God let make ”. From where, once again: “is Which this God who could let make? ”. Because the aiming of Jonas here is that of one théodicée, as there was the many one of it before, and of which that of Leibniz remains certainly most famous: it is indeed a question of defending the cause of God, in particular on the basis of the aporia, of the gigantic obstacle which the existence of the evil constitutes, which more is in its most abominable form. Which is this God who could let act the Nazis and forsake apparently the “ people elected ”? Jonas underlines in the passing the situation of the Jew, for which, contrary with the Christian, the world is not the place of the evil but that of God, creation, the redemption: “laissez-faire” of God is much harder to include/understand for the Jew. Can God be still the “ lord of the history ”?

The myth jonassien of Creation

To reconsider again fresh the concept of God, Jonas proposes a myth of its invention, the myth of the creation which he proposed before in “Between nothing and eternity”. “ At the beginning, by an unsoundable choice, the divine bottom To be it decided to be delivered randomly, with the risk, the infinite diversity of becoming. And that entirely ”. In other words, the act even of creation consists of a renouncement of God: it gives up any later modification. It is delivered entirely in the creative process, it was not retained. Jonas here multiplies the metaphors with the manner of Bergson, with a writing very speaking, which would not be without displeasing to the analytical philosophers… It is the thesis of the immanence, thesis opposed to dualism, for example such as one finds it in Christianity. God is not apart from the world, inflecting with his sandstone the creative process: he was entirely given, without reserve right from the start, as of the passage of nothing to the being, as of the Big-bang. Null extra-fashionable providence, the world, ourselves sums in this forsaken direction. Such is the myth, as Jonas itself names it, of “'' the being-with-world of God ''”. But which says immanence does not say identity of God and the world: it is not a pantheism immanent. God and the world is indeed distinct, but God completely gave up himself in his creative act: it is necessary well to go back being to the being to take again a Heideggerien vocabulary, but To be it was given without reserve in the production of being. Jonas further specifies God gave up his own being, that it is “'' stripped his divinity ''”. It was given up with the profit to become it, of the process of creation continuing. And it is through becoming it that the Divinity can reconquer and find her plenitude, that it can gain… or lose.

The matter first of all left this creative act. Then a “ new language of the world ” appeared: life. Fruit of the chance, it was until waited the Divinity in her reconquest of oneself. With it the feeling, perception, the desire appears. With it, “ eternity finds a force, it fills up, contained after contents, of a consent to oneself, and for the first time the god who wakes up can say that creation is good ”. It is thus with the life that the Divinity starts through creation to become aware of itself, at least of its creation and even to appreciate it. But with the life appears its double necessary, death, the price to be paid necessary: who says food known as to die (to look further into the relationship between the life and mortality, it is necessary to absolutely read “the burden and the grace of mortality”). It is through finitude, of mortality, the limit that God reaches itself: “ it is precisely through the short assertion of a feeling of oneself, one to act and one to suffer clean with individuals finished, in front of the pressure of finitude, all the urgency and thus all the freshness of their emotions, that the divine landscape deploys its play of color, and that the divinity reaches the experiment of itself ”. It should be noted that each personal experience, that the experiment of the various alive species constitutes as many faces to the car-experiment of the divinity. The development of the directions, the desires, the conscience are as much of intensification, widening of the conscience that God acquires itself. In short, it is through becoming it, and in particular of the biological evolution appeared thanks to the hazardous meeting of favorable conditions on ground that God reconquers his knowledge of itself and its divinity. Even through the suffering, God can look further into his knowledge. At this stage, God cannot lose: he cannot see his intention, in particular his aiming of the good, not be carried out.

But with the appearance of the man innocence ceases. With the man extends knowledge and freedom: the man is a responsible being, which lives according to the good and the evil. The knowledge and the freedom of the man insert it in the moral existence (cf Genesis). The innocence of creation ceases then. Starting from this stage, God can lose or gain, whereas before it could only… not lose, but not gain. It is between the hands of the man that the destiny of God and his achievement is entrusted, of its return to oneself: “ the image of God, outlined in the stammerings of the physical universe, worked up to that point - although still indécidée - in the spirals of the life préhumaines, vast circles which are tightened then, this image, therefore, passes under the problematic guard of the man, to be accomplished, saved, or corrupted by what the latter fact of itself and the world ”. The divinity, the deification is thus entrusted to the man who has for heavy responsibility of ensure the return to oneself of God, and the achievement of her intention.

Here is completed the original myth which Jonas then will reconsider, or rather of which it will draw the conclusions with regard to the concept of God. If creation proceeded thus, what that does have like consequence on the concept of God? Which are the theological implications of this myth? Jonas thus will translate “ the image of concepts ”.

Theological consequences of the myth

Myth previously outlined, it appears first of all that God is suffering . That seems to be opposed to its biblical representation which reveals it like very powerful. For Jonas, “ the relation of God in the world implies a suffering on the side of God as of the moment of creation, and surely as of the moment of the creation of the man ”. It also implies a suffering of the creature, but that was always recognized by theology in general. Thereafter, Jonas calls some with passages of the Old Testament to support the idea that finally its design of suffering God is not as much as that in contradiction with its biblical representation, i.e. it puts in front of the biblical passages which reveal God like suffering (God, scorned by the men., who afflicts themselves some; God who regrets having created the man and is disappointed by it; … etc).

It appears, moreover, that God is in becoming . God is not an immutable being: he emerges, he appears in time. There is to become the divine one. Jonas thus rejects the usual characters of supratemporality and immutability, but also the traditional ontological opposition between Being and becoming. Jonas defends that this God in becoming agrees well better with the biblical language. God is in becoming, at least in the direction where it affected, is deteriorated by what occurs in the world, as certain passages of the bibles previously evoked propose it. From his relation with created, God receives an experiment of the world: he is influenced by it. God is thus in becoming, at least from his relation with created which is to him in becoming. God is in connection with the world, world which is temporal, therefore God temporalise: there is progressively to become progressive of God of fashionable creation. By this becoming of God, Jonas separates from the doctrines nietzschéenne Eternal return from same as it qualifies absolute immanentism: since God receives an experiment of the world, all cannot return to same eternally, since God preserves a memory.

Thirdly, it appears that God is concerned : he is “ implied in that of which he has the concern. Whatever the “primitive” state of the divinity, it ceased being enclosed in itself as of the moment when it was compromised with the existence of a world, by creating this world or by accepting that it is born ”. But if God is concerned with his creatures, it should be specified that this concern does not mean interference: in fact the creatures act, it cannot push by its concern with the realization of a goal. God, concerned being, are thus in danger, since the realization of the goal about which he worries does not depend on him but on its creatures (let us recall that God completely gave up himself in creation). If God could by his concern carried out his aimings, the world would be perfect. But the atrocities of Auschwitz, for example, (but one can think as much here of the genocides in Africa) attest imperfection of the world well. From where two possible consequences: the world is bad thus God does not exist; the world is bad thus it is not God who acts and decides in the world. Once again, Jonas does not retain the first assumption. God exists, but the existence of the evil pushes to change the usual concept of it. “ Of any way, by an unsoundable act of wisdom, or love, or whatever could be the divine motivation, it gave up guaranteeing its own satisfaction towards itself by its own power, after it had already given up, by creation itself, with being all in all ”.

But especially, fourthly, God is not very powerful . To support that, it starts by criticizing in the field of logic the paradoxality of the concept of absolute power, then in a second advances a theological argument.

In which direction the concept of absolute power is it car-contradictory? Such an absolute power would be a power which is not limited, which does not have as a limit of the things existing apart from itself. The existence of the otherness would be for it the destruction of absoluïté of its power: “ the absolute power, consequently, does not have in its loneliness any object on which to act ”. But a power without object is a power without thus being able would vanish. In this direction the absolute power is a car-contradictory concept, stripped of direction. To have capacity, it is to have capacity on something, it is thus necessarily not to be absolute (just like freedom is tested only in the need and the constraint). That amounts defining the concept of power in a relational way. It is this relational character which makes impossible the concept of absolute power. And if the thing on which the capacity is exerted does not offer any resistance, this exerted capacity returns to the eyes of Jonas to a not-capacity, with an absence of power. The power only exists as power exerted on a thing which has itself a power. Power means capacity to overcome something. And the simple coexistence of a thing is enough so that there is power, because Jonas defends synonymy between existing and resisting, which one will concede to him without difficulty. Consequently, so that there is power, this one must be divided (even if for example the power of the creatures comes from the divine power): God is not a being the Almighty.

But also draws up a theological objection with the idea of divine absolute power. God can be the Almighty AND good only on the condition of being unsoundable: if he were the Almighty, one could maintain his kindness only by designing God like a being with the incomprehensible intention, with the unsoundable intention, which would escape our comprehension, with our understanding: “ It is only of one completely inintelligible God whom one can say that it is at the same time absolutely good and absolutely the Almighty, and that nevertheless it tolerates the world such as it is ”. In other words, Jonas proposes impossibility of binding together simultaneously three concepts as a God: absolute power, supreme kindness and comprehensibility. It is thus a question of knowing which properties are necessarily related to the concept of God. In other words, of which property can one do to pose the concept of God? God is necessarily good. This property is inalienable: God is necessarily a good being, supremely good. With regard to the connaissability of God, it is certainly limited, but cannot be abandoned: the completely enigmatic character of God is irreconcilable with the Torah, which insists on the fact that one can know God, a share of its will and even of its gasoline (there was revelation). The Judaism cannot admit inintelligible God. On this point, Jonas remains faithful to its religious tradition. God is thus absolutely good and recognizable. Consequently it cannot be very powerful. It is the need from the judaïque point of view for at least posing the concept of God like recognizable who results in rejecting, on the theological level all (because Jonas, as a philosopher, initially rejected this idea of absolute power logically) the divine absolute power. “After Auschwitz, we can affirm, more resolutely than ever before, than a all-powerful divinity or would not be very good, or would remain entirely incomprehensible (in its government of the world, who only allows us to seize it). But if God, in a certain manner and with a certain degree, must be understandable (and we are obliged us to hold to with it), then it is necessary that its kindness is compatible with the existence of the evil, and it does not go from there from the kind that if he is not the Almighty. It is then only that we can maintain that it is comprehensible and good, in spite of the evil that there is in the world”.

Jonas hastens to add whereas this limited power is not it according to good-wanting it of revocable God of manner: God cannot find his absolute power and to modify the course of the things, there is no miracle: “ during every year that the fury of Auschwitz lasted, God keep silent ”. The only “miracles” were human. And if God did not intervene it is because it could not it. Once again, God did not retain himself during creation, it completely gave up himself. God is not a being the Almighty. The concept of God whom Jonas develops is thus that of a “ God which thus answers the shock of the events society men against his own being, not “of a strong hand and a tended arm” - as recite we it every Jewish year, us them, to commemorate the exit of Egypt - but by working towards its unaccomplished end with a penetrating dumbness ”. Here, Jonas thus breaks with the Jewish tradition. God wants the good but is not the Almighty, the evil comes from the man (Jonas criticizes the Manicheism, who allots the good and the evil to two antagonistic powers). Human freedom attests renouncement of the absolute power well. Jonas speaks thereafter about creation like “ act of autodépouillement divine ”. God entirely stripped himself of his power in finished to which it entrusts its fate.

It is by this act of negation of its power that God could create the world. After this total gift of oneself, God does not have anything any more to give: “ is now with the man to give him. And it can do it by taking care that, in the routes of its life, does not arrive, or does not arrive too often, and not because of him, the man, that God can regret having let become the world ”. Jonas reverses here the usual relation between God and the man and gives here all his point to human freedom, and thus to the human responsibility.

Conclusion

In short, the essential idea that Jonas developed in this short text is that of the renouncement of the divine power at the time of fashionable creation. To establish the concept of God after Auschwitz, it is necessarily to divide this concept and that of absolute power, on the one hand because that does not allow, on the theological level, the maintenance of divine kindness and the connaissability of God, but especially, on the logical level, because the absolute power is a contradictory concept: it is consequently possible to rationally maintain the kindness of God, even after the atrocities of Auschwitz. This God who “let make” is in fact God who could not make differently, because it gave up all its power to create the world. It is allocated from now on to the man to reach divine, and to carry out happiness and peace ici-bas. This design of God as a being which stripped itself of its absolute power to make occur the world has the merit to seek to reconcile without too much compromise (Jonas maintains however that God is recognizable, which can seem a priori traditional, or, by interpretative charity, like a priori of rationality) the existence of the evil and that of God (like being good). It one is théodicée here inexpensive which Jonas proposes, and a design of God who gives all his weight to the human responsibility, and thus all his value with humanity. God according to Auschwitz does not answer the prayers, it does not make a miracle: he bequeathed us in a concerned way clean sound to become of which it falls to us to ensure the réalisation. God, by definition, is absolutely imperceptible; it is not thus a question of Him in the present attempts of including/understanding It. As for speaking about " concept of Dieu" , that returns to a creation of God by the man, which is a metaphysical impossibility, the inferior who cannot produce the superior.

Random links:

Half-timbered house | Causapscal | Espar | San Millán of Cogolla | Tachypleus tridentatus