Participation in victim-offender mediation can reduce the risk of reoffending. However, relatively little is known about how VOM affects the intermediate psychological changes underlying this effect. It was hypothesized that VOM increases feelings of responsibility, guilt, and shame among offenders as well as empathy toward the victim. It was also expected that VOM leads to feelings of moral failure among offenders, increasing their intention to desist, and improving their relation with the victim, relatives, and community. Lastly, it was hypothesized that (...) offenders may experience reduced rejection, concerns about condemnation, threat to their social moral identity, and victim blame following VOM. To this end, we compared psychological changes in offenders who participated in a VOM program in the Netherlands with those of offenders who were willing to but did not participate. A quasi-experimental, pre- and postmeasure research design was used to compare these groups. Our findings tentatively suggest that offenders who participate in VOM have more responsibility-taking and victim empathy, feel more guilt and shame, and experience higher moral failure than offenders who do not participate in VOM do. Offenders also reported feeling significantly less awkward about meeting the victim again after VOM. Future research should address how and to what degree these psychological changes translate into a lower risk of reoffending. (shrink)

Sören Halldén’s logic of nonsense is one of the most well-known many-valued logics available in the literature. In this paper, we discuss Peter Woodruff’s as yet rather unexplored attempt to advance a version of such a logic built on the top of a constructive logical basis. We start by recalling the basics of Woodruff’s system and by bringing to light some of its notable features. We then go on to elaborate on some of the difficulties attached to it; on our (...) way to offer a possible solution to such difficulties, we discuss the relation between Woodruff’s system and two-dimensional semantics for many-valued logics, as developed by Hans Herzberger. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 64.4 (2003) 619-637 [Access article in PDF] Overcoming Gnosticism:Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Natural World Benjamin Lazier University of Chicago In 1984, about a decade before his own murder, the Romanian scholar of religion Ioan Culianu complained of a more widespread, if decidedly less grisly form of assault. 1 The gnostics, he declared in a moment of (...) high jocularity, had "taken hold of the whole world, and we were not aware of it. It is a mixed feeling of anxiety and admiration, since I cannot refrain myself from thinking that these alien body-snatchers have done a remarkable job indeed." 2Though offered in jest, Culianu's designation "alien body-snatchers" quite accurately sums up what has remained since 1934 the leading view of gnosticism as a delimited, identifiable phenomenon. In that year appeared the first monumental volume of Gnosis und spätantiker Geist (Gnosis and the Spirit of Late Antiquity) composed by the young Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas as a dissertation under Martin Heidegger and the theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Over the next sixty years Jonas returned again and again to the movement as he defined it. Above all, gnosticism had as its guiding principle the notion of das Fremde. The term includes in its linguistic domain not only "the alien," by which it is most usually translated, but its cognates as well: the strange, the foreign, the other, the unknown, the uncanny, and the like. This sense of alienation is wildly overdetermined in gnostic theology: man is alienated from himself, from a fully transcendent God, and most powerfully from the material, [End Page 619] sensuous universe in which he lives, created as it was by an evil, malicious demiurge. Such anti-cosmism could license both ascetic retreat from the world as well as an antinomian descent into the worldly abyss, with the intent to defeat it from within. The locution "body-snatcher" now acquires relevance, for gnostic theology made impossible any positive appraisal of the physical body, or of the physical world at all for that matter. As the political philosopher Leo Strauss put it in a letter to Jonas, gnosticism may well have been the most radical rebellion in Western history against the Greek notion of physis.In stylized terms Jonas's philosophical career represents what I would like to call gnosticism's "third overcoming." Such terms signal an allegiance to the work of the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. But they signal a departure as well. In Legitimität der Neuzeit (Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 1966), Blumenberg undertook what must count among the most ambitious revisions of Western intellectual history ever ventured. Against a rash of attacks on the modern age as an ill-concealed, secularized derivative of an earlier Christian era, he stepped up in its defense. He linked the emergence of the modern age—defined preeminently by man's need for self-assertion, to act in the world—to a "second overcoming" of gnosticism at the end of the Middle Ages. The gnostic spirit he found revived by the nominalism and theological voluntarism of late-medieval scholastic theology, a loose confluence of thought centripetally bound by the black hole of the deus absconditus or hidden god. Whereas gnosticism's first overcoming was Augustine's work and but a partial success, its second, and for Blumenberg "final" overcoming was the work of an ethos of human self-assertion best instantiated by the scientific program of Francis Bacon.To argue for its third overcoming in the late 1920s and '30s is therefore to take leave of Blumenberg's account, if also to extend it. The condition for the possibility of this argument, of course, is that gnosticism had in fact returned. Gnosticism, or at the very least a host of phenomena going by the name and generally understood as such, did indeed return, and with a vengeance—on the occult scene, in philosophy, in theology of all persuasions, even in natural-scientific discourse. This period also witnessed the return of the... (shrink)

The present study examines the work of a group of medical scientists as they identify interpretative ‘pitfalls’ – recurrent sources of error – in the use of a new radiographic technique, formulate suggestions on how these pitfalls can be avoided and communicate their findings in the form of a scientific publication. The analysis focuses on a session in which previously diagnosed cases are discussed, and demonstrates the ways in which a certain source of diagnostic error gradually emerges as a taken-for-granted (...) in the interaction. An increased sense of recognition, recurrence and typicality is discernible in the treatment of the cases. Talk characterized by expansions and elaborations, displays of understanding in the form of reformulations, understanding checks, and so on, leave room for brief typifications and reifications of interpretative difficulties in characteristics of the imaging technique. Topical treatment of perception and interpretation, as well as embodied engagement, become decreasingly salient. It is argued that the abstracted formulations in the published text rely on the case-by-case working up of generality from particularity; from individualized accounts of why ‘I’ interpreted the image in a certain way to proffered generalizations achieved through articulated perceptions of a generalized ‘one’. If these proffers are ratified, a potential ground is established for the consensual formulation of a pitfall. The formulation of novel instructions is consequently made relevant, projecting a re-instructed diagnostic practice. (shrink)

This special issue aims to redress the balance and to open up Gaston Bachelard's work beyond a small in-crowd of experts and aficionado’s in France. It aims to stimulate the discovery of new and understudied aspects of Bachelard’s work, including aspects of the intellectual milieu he was working in. Fortunately, for this purpose we were able to rely both on renowned Bachelard specialists, such as Hans-Jörg Rheinberg-er, Cristina Chimisso and Dominique Lecourt, as well as on a number of younger (...) scholars who are discovering their work in a different intellectual context. At the same time we also want to reassess the value of this oeuvre, which also entails examining the reasons and causes of the relative neglect of Bachelard’s work in recent times. Has it exhausted its possibilities? Does it have intrinsic limitations that have contributed to the eclipse, as some influential, mainly French, philoso-phers have more or less explicitly suggested? (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to investigate into the ethical significance of friendship, beginning with its origins in ancient Greek philosophy. The first part is dedicated to an interpretation of Plato’s understanding of friendship as a way towards the good. The second part focuses on how Aristotle takes up the thread after Plato and elaborates on the potential of friendship to enhance the good between virtuous people. In the final parts, the paper uncovers Friedrich Nietzsche’s posthumous thoughts on “an (...) ethics of friendship”, which he traces back to ancient Greek philosophy, and it offers a concluding critical commentary on three modern thinkers, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, who reflect, each in their own way, on the human good in an on-going dialogue with the ancient Greek philosophy of friendship. (shrink)

Die Herausforderung der modernen Technik für die ethische Orientierung des menschlichen Handelns wurde und wird in immer brisanterer Form zum Thema einer Theorie von einer erweiterten Verantwortlichkeit. Besonders Jonas’ Buch Das Prinzip Verantwortung ist hierzu als Vorreiter gewürdigt worden. Es war in der Tat Jonas, dem es gelang, mit seinem Buch weit über die Fachzirkel hinaus die größere Öffentlichkeit zu erreichen. Er stellte zu Recht fest, durch das Übermaß der wissenschaftlich multiplizierten technologischen Macht wachse dem Menschen »eine neue, nie zuvor (...) erträumte Dimension der Verantwortung « zu. (shrink)

En la primera parte de este trabajo se busca explicar por qué tanto la figura personal de Jorge Luis Borges como su propia obra han generado alguna clase de recelo o “miedo”. Las prevenciones de orden político hacia su persona, por un lado, y las complejas relaciones entre la dificultad y disfrute que surgen en el tratamiento sus textos, por el otro, son dos dimensiones interconectadas que participan en la configuración de una representación cultural sobre Borges en su propio país, (...) Argentina. Como un método para vencer “el miedo a Borges”, en la segunda parte se muestra cómo muy diversas y heterogéneas producciones de la cultura popular pueden llegar a ser vías de acceso para empezar a tratar temas de su obra. En la tercera parte, que es el núcleo de este trabajo, se presenta el desarrollo una investigación que recurrió a un capítulo de la serie de dibujos animados “Los Simpson” como vía de acceso a un texto de Borges. Los resultados ofrecen evidencia empírica a favor de las dos hipótesis evaluadas. En primer lugar, una tarea preparatoria con una producción de la cultura popular parece favorecer la comprensión global. En segundo lugar, la lectura en voz alta y comentada parece favorecer no sólo la comprensión en general sino también el disfrute de los textos. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Hans Jonas has reflected on the notion of the human soul and on the concept of man being created in God’s image. A careful analysis of his writings reveals that (approximately) from 1968 he changed his perspective on these topics. Before this year, Jonas used some Gnostic myths to speak about the image of man in relation to God and was concerned that referring to the immortality of the human soul or to the notion of imago (...) Dei could lead to dualistic or pseudo-Gnostic interpretations of the natural world. From 1968 (when Jonas published an article for an American Jewish journal) he started to underline the importance of the Judeo-Christian notion of imago Dei (from the book of Genesis) for his ethical project. Subsequently, he used this concept (derived from the Bible rather than from Gnostic texts) in support of his ethical approach to show the special role that God assigned to humanity to act as a steward of His creation. This article presents the development of Jonas’s contributions on these issues over time, their importance in relation to his ethical project and how he was influenced in the development of his perspective on this subject. (shrink)

An enquiry into the relevance of Hans Jonas' thinking to present-day debates, including transhumanism, posthumanism, and human enhancement.

‘Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism’ (published in Social Research , 1952) is indeed one of Hans Jonas’ most famous essays, to which its author reserved very deep attention during his philosophical career. As a former pupil of Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, Jonas started to deal with religious topics, and specifically with Gnosticism, from the very outset of his philosophical career in the 1920s. After gaining recognition thanks to his remarkable philosophical-existential interpretation of Gnosticism, he returned to the modern age (...) and its philosophical characters. Principally, Jonas discovered that modern philosophy up to Heidegger and Sartre suffered from a peculiar spiritual disease – namely, nihilism – that he had already traced in ancient Gnosticism and that he intended to reject. Therefore, Jonas’ acquaintance with ancient religion and thinking gave him a deep insight into the modern age and provided him with a first glimpse of what was later to become his biological philosophy. However, whoever could imagine that the idea of tracing similarities between Gnosticism and modern thinking came to Jonas at the beginning of 1950 from the famous philosopher and biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy? In this article, I shall endeavour to demonstrate this thesis by quoting from unpublished documents. However, I shall also try to prove that Jonas did not follow von Bertalanffy’s advice completely. The overall aim is, therefore, both to highlight the origins of an essential turning point in the thinking of Hans Jonas, and, on such a basis, to outline the innovation and originality of his philosophical contribution. (shrink)

Dieses essential widmet sich dem Werk des Philosophen Hans Jonas und zwar aus dem Blickwinkel der Entwicklung seines Denkens. Die frühen Studien über die spätantike Gnosis bilden den Ausgangspunkt. Hier stößt Jonas auf ein Thema, das er in seinem gesamten späteren Werk kritisch diskutiert, nämlich das des weltfeindlichen Dualismus. In den ab den 1940er-Jahren entworfenen Studien zu einer philosophischen Biologie wird der Versuch unternommen, den Menschen in seiner leib-geistigen Verfasstheit bis hin zu seinen höchsten symbolischen Ausdrucksformen aus dem Prozess (...) der gesamten Evolution heraus zu deuten und damit implizit die Weltfeindlichkeit der Gnosis zu widerlegen. In seiner Ethik der Verantwortung, die er in dem 1979 veröffentlichten berühmten Prinzip Verantwortung systematisch vorträgt, findet sich gleichsam die ethische Seite der Überwindung der Gnosis, nämlich, dass der Mensch Verantwortung für eine Welt zu übernehmen habe, in der auch zukünftige Generationen menschenwürdig leben können. In seinen letzten metaphysisch-theologischen Vermutungen dann wird die Problematik der Verantwortung mit Blick auf einen in der Schöpfung selber werdenden Gott hin thematisiert. (shrink)

Should we understand the biological philosophy of Hans Jonas as a phenomenology for unveiling the phenomenon of life or as a kind of Hegelian metaphysics that presents life as a substantial principle? To answer that question, we need to deal first with the question of our access to other living beings and then with the problem of the spiritualization of the concept of evolution. This article will use an essay called “Organism and Freedom: An Essay in Philosophical Biology.”.

Pretende-se com este artigo, demonstrar como o niilismo é um dos conceitos centrais da obra de Hans Jonas. Para isso, analisaremos como o problema se desdobra em sua obra a partir de três perspectivas complementares: a identificação de um niilismo cósmico, cujo primeira aparição são os movimentos gnósticos da Antiguidade tardia e seus impactos sobre o cristianismo primitivo; um niilismo antropológico derivado dessa posição gnóstica e agravado pela filosofia existencialista; um niilismo ético e tecnológico, que tanto serve para diagnosticar (...) a tecnologia como “vontade de ilimitado poder” quanto para compreender a crise ambiental a partir da crise de valores que marca o Ocidente a partir da modernidade. Com isso, o niilismo, interpretado como velle nihil, ou seja, como vontade de negação e, mais especificamente, de destruição, é uma chave interpretativa para a crise ambiental. Dessa forma, a obra de Jonas pode ser considerada como uma tentativa de evitar que o “mais estranho dos hóspedes” destrua a própria morada. (shrink)

Après avoir restitué le mouvement, en vertu duquel le philosophe expose dans Le Principe responsabilité une éthique qui s’applique à la vie et en provient, cet ouvrage justifie le tournant médical opéré par Hans Jonas dans Technik, Medizin und Ethik. Cela ouvre une réflexion en quatre temps. En premier lieu, il faut faire un diagnostic éthique du rôle de la technique au sein de la recherche scientifique. En second lieu, il faut se demander si l’accélération de nos progrès technologiques (...) ne modifie pas la signification de la médecine, ce qui requiert une interrogation sur les valeurs qui guident cette pratique. Il apparaît alors que ce sont les conditions les plus essentielles de notre être-au-monde, la naissance et la mort, qui risquent d’être altérées par l’agir technologique. Dans un troisième et quatrième moment, il faudra donc se pencher sur la manière dont la procréation médicale assistée et, plus fondamentalement encore, l’ingénierie future pourraient modifier le sens de la venue au monde des enfants. Outre la natalité, la mortalité est le second pôle qui détermine les conditions essentielles de la présence au monde de l’homme. C’est la raison pour laquelle, dans un dernier temps, l’éthique doit également se pencher sur la manière dont des techniques, apparues dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, peuvent bouleverser notre façon de mourir. (shrink)

Este trabajo ofrece una presentación y un examen crítico de una de las ideas filosófico-teológicas más controversiales y sugerentes de Hans Jonas: la de un Dios “sufriente” y “no omnipotente”. Asimismo, se introducen algunas reacciones críticas a dicha noción. Posteriormente, se busca relacionarla, destacando semejanzas y diferencias, con reflexiones recientes en torno a un “pensamiento posmetafísico”. Algunos comentarios sobre la actualidad o pertinencia de la propuesta jonasiana se plantean al final del trabajo.

Este artigo discute a crtica de Hans Jonas ao uso da tcnica afastada da racionalidade moral, bem como a proposta tica por ele apresentada que tem como mxima a incluso da tcnica e da natureza na reflexo moral. luz da tica da responsabilidade sero analisadas duas questes: Por que Jonas afirma ser a tica tradicional como a kantiana, por exemplo, incapaz de mediar a relao homem-natureza-tcnica? A reflexo moral jonasiana possibilita ao homo tecnologicus uma conduta tica vivel em relao (...) natureza e tcnica? (shrink)

Hans Jonas’ anti-visionary conservation-oriented environmental philosophy—prominently articulated in his seminal book The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age —had a tremendous impact on public and philosophical debates throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. Jonas argues that the “environmental crisis” reveals an underlying fundamental “crisis” in the human-nature relation. The crisis challenges the metaphysical foundations of our Western culture—including the dominant way humans view and deal with nature. Environmental ethics, therefore, requires critical reflection on (...) and revision of the underlying philosophy of nature: ethics and philosophy of nature, Jonas argues, are twin sisters. This approach provokes severe criticism: the diagnosis objection, the origin analysis objection, the justification objection, and the problem-solution objection. Most objections are not as sound as they claim to be—although Jonas’ argumentative justification is in fact a bit weak. However, a systematic critique of the objections of the critics from an analytic perspective shows that he developed a political and practical “philosophy of nature” in which anthropology, ethics, and politics are conceptualized as a converging domain as one of the core constituents of environmentals ethics for this century. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of Hans Jonas’ analysis of metabolism, the centrepiece of Jonas’ philosophy of organism, in relation to recent controversies regarding the phenomenological dimension of life-mind continuity as understood within ‘autopoietic’ enactivism (AE). Jonas’ philosophy of organism chiefly inspired AE’s development of what we might call ‘the phenomenological life-mind continuity thesis’ (PLMCT), the claim that certain phenomenological features of human experience are central to a proper scientific understanding of both life and mind, and as such (...) central features of all living organisms. After discussing the understanding of PLMCT within AE, and recent criticisms thereof, I develop a reading of Jonas’ analysis of metabolism, in light of previous commentators, which emphasizes its systematicity and transcendental flavour. The central thought is that, for Jonas, the attribution of certain phenomenological features is a necessary precondition for our understanding of the possibility of metabolism, rather than being derivable from metabolism itself. I argue that my interpretation strengthens Jonas’ contribution to AE’s justification for ascribing certain phenomenological features to life across the board. However, it also emphasises the need to complement Jonas’ analysis with an explanatory account of organic identity in order to vindicate these phenomenological ascriptions in a scientific context. (shrink)

Hans Jonas bénéficie de la reconnaissance de ses pairs comme de la notoriété auprès d'un large public. L'auteur du " Principe responsabilité " est aussi un spécialiste de la religion gnostique, un philosophe de la vie analysant la dynamique de l'organisme et de l'esprit. La notion de liberté est un fil conducteur herméneutique pour exposer une pensée éclectique mais unitaire et originale.

In this paper we offer an overall account of the complex and multilayered Italian reception of Hans Jonas’ philosophy, with an eye to its specific features compared to what happened elsewhere. After an introductory foreword the paper is structured in four sections and a brief conclusion, each of which deals with a peculiar aspect of Jonas’ thought: ethics and bioethics, philosophical biology and ontology of life, gnostic and religious studies, studies in the history of philosophy. In the final section (...) we sum up the overall meaning of the «Wirkungsgeschichte» of Jonas’ philosophy in Italy and highlight possible lines of research still to be accomplished. (shrink)

The article endeavours to compare the reflections on the Shoah of two of the most celebrated intellectuals of Jewish origin of the 20th century, namely the German philosopher Hans Jonas and the Soviet writer Vasily Grossman. Both Jonas’ essay on The Concept of God after Auschwitz and Grossman’s novels and reports, such as The Hell of Treblinka, Life and Fate, and The Sistine Madonna, are characterised by a thorough enquiry into the ambivalence of the human condition, that tries to (...) shed some light on the disturbing abyss of Auschwitz and the Shoah. Although neither Jonas nor Grossman considered themselves as religious believers, thanks to the Shoah they recollected their Jewish roots and developed peculiar and innovative thoughts on the meaning and vulnerability of life, human freedom, immortality, and God. The article endeavours to highlight the main similarities and differences between these two authors, who tackled the issue of thinking after Auschwitz. (shrink)

Hans Jonas (1903–1993) was one of the most important German-Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. A student of Martin Heidegger and close friend of Hannah Arendt, Jonas advanced the fields of phenomenology and practical ethics in ways that are just beginning to be appreciated in the English-speaking world. Drawing here on unpublished and newly translated material, Lewis Coyne brings together for the first time in English Jonas's philosophy of life, ethic of responsibility, political theory, philosophy of technology and bioethics. (...) -/- In Hans Jonas: Life, Technology and the Horizons of Responsibility, Coyne argues that the aim of Jonas's philosophy is to confront three critical issues inherent to modernity: nihilism, the ecological crisis and the transhumanist drive to biotechnologically enhance human beings. While these might at first appear disparate, for Jonas all follow from the materialist turn taken by Western thought from the 17th century onwards, and he therefore seeks to tackle all three issues at their collective point of origin. This book explores how Jonas develops a new categorical imperative of responsibility on the basis of an ontology that does justice to the purposefulness and dignity of life: to act in a way that does not compromise the future of humanity on earth. -/- Reflecting on this, as we face a potential future of ecological and societal collapse, Coyne forcefully demonstrates the urgency of Jonas's demand that humanity accept its newfound responsibility as the 'shepherd of beings'. (shrink)

Articulates the fundamental importance of ontology to Hans Jonas’s environmental ethics.

This article discusses Hans Jonas’ argument for teleology in living organisms, in light of recently raised concerns over enactivism’s “Jonasian turn.” Drawing on textual resources rarely discussed in contemporary enactivist literature on Jonas’ philosophy, we reconstruct five core ideas of his thinking: 1) That natural science’s rejection of teleology is methodological rather than ontological, and thus not a proof of its non-existence; 2) that denial of the reality of teleology amounts to a performative self-contradiction; 3) that the fact of (...) evolution makes it implausible that only humans actualize purpose; 4) that the concept of metabolism delimits and gestures towards beings performing purposive activity; and 5) that concrete encounters with living organisms are indispensable for the judgment that they are purposive. Lastly, we draw attention to how Jonas’ understanding of teleology and inwardness in nonhuman life in terms of degrees of identity with human life poses a problem for his view. In this way, we hope to clarify what Jonas, as an important source of inspiration for the enactivist project, is proposing. (shrink)

O objetivo do presente ensaio é apresentar os principais pontos da crítica de Hans Jonas à concepção de natureza desenvolvida na modernidade, sobretudo pelas ciências naturais e pela matemática. A influência da matemática e da física, diz Jonas, projetou sobre a natureza e sobre o cosmos um olhar científico que, interessando em entender “apenas” seu funcionamento a partir das descobertas das leis que os regem, legou-nos um cosmos e uma natureza destituídos de valor intrínseco. Compreender essa análise de Jonas (...) sobre a concepção de natureza na modernidade nos permite entender a preocupação do filósofo a respeito do modo como os seres humanos se relacionam e agem com/no mundo natural, tarefa importante para situar sua fenomenologia dentro de seu projeto ético. (shrink)

El designio de este trabajo es mostrar cómo Hans Jonas intenta fundar el deber en el ser y las dificultades que este intento traen consigo.

I show how Hans Jonas, one of Heidegger's most distinguished Jewish students, traces his mentor's susceptibility to Nazism to a moral nihilism at the heart of Heidegger's teaching in "Being and Time". I then demonstrate how Jonas's own "existential interpretation of the biological facts" and metaphysical grounding of "an imperative of responsibility" provide one of the most systematic and challenging rejoinders to the moral failings of Heidegger's thought.

Nicht viele Philosophen haben eine solch große Resonanz in der Öffentlichkeit erfahren wie Hans Jonas. Das lag nicht ausschließlich an seinem Bestseller "Das Prinzip Verantwortung", der 1979/80 zu einem Medienereignis wurde. Jonas' Verdienst war es, eine ethische Debatte über die Zukunft des Menschen befeuert zu haben, die den Zeitgeist traf. Doch sind die Ideen von Hans Jonas heute noch zeitgemäß? Wie haben sich einzelne Themen weiterentwickelt? Der vorliegende Band diskutiert die Denkwege von Hans Jonas und versammelt einige (...) Antworten von ausgewiesenen Jonas-Experten. (shrink)

Nous ne pouvons pas laisser l'avenir de l'humanité et les questions écologiques à l'appréciation de quelques-uns. Ce problème mérite un véritable débat scientifique, philosophique et politique. Au milieu des incertitudes grandissantes, cet ouvrage se propose comme une lecture critique d'une culture dominée par la raison technoscientifique et la puissance capitaliste. Si l'humanité doit continuer à exister, comme le pense Hans Jonas, comment la vulnérabilité peut-elle devenir une force, un levier pour sa préservation? Le devoir-être des générations futures implique un (...) devoir-agir urgent de la part des générations actuelles. Lorsque cette exigence est menacée, la responsabilité s'impose comme un devoir de type kantien. L'humanité doit redécouvrir un nouveau rapport au monde : elle doit reconnaître que la nature est limitée et qu'elle n'est pas disponible à volonté. L'amour de la nature, la sobriété, la justice semblent incontournables dans l'exercice de cet impératif: 'Agis de façon que les effets de ton action soient compatibles avec la permanence d'une vie authentiquement humaine sur terre'"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

L’hypothèse de travail que nous entendons vérifier dans la présente étude est que le projet philosophique de Hans Jonas est traversé par une interrogation qui demeure constante (même si elle ne s’articule pas dans ces termes) depuis les premiers travaux sur la gnose jusqu’aux dernières conjectures métaphysiques, à savoir celle de la destination de l’homme (Bestimmung des Menschen) dans le monde. Ce sera en prenant ce concept comme fil conducteur que nous entendons articuler ici l’unité de l’œ...

Ce travail expose et discute la réception de Hans Jonas effectuée au sein de la « science de l’image » (Bildwissenschaft). On présente, en premier lieu, le débat actuel sur l’image dans le cadre de cette Bildwissenschaft. En second lieu, on expose les principaux moments de la réception de Jonas dans ledit contexte et on analyse les positions fondamentales de Jonas à propos de l’image et de l’imagination. Enfin, on évalue les avancées et les limites de la réception de (...) Jonas et on prend en considération quelques positions jonassiennes qui peuvent représenter un apport au débat actuel sur l’image. (shrink)

What is the concept of life that, according to Hans Jonas, can and must constitute an object of political responsibility? It is neither mechanist nor purely phenomenological, but rather has a speculative aspect. It is presented through the questions of being, self and teleology: life is a singular’s act of constant creation of itself as a world-relation. Why does Jonas desire the protection of the „image of man“? This makes sense if „image“ is understood not as a given figure, (...) but rather as man’s capacity of freedom and responsibility. If democracy happens in a world as a dialogue with others, than jonassian politics, which concern the very possibility of world and life that does not speak (as in the case of the unborn), are not democratic: yet their democratic element has to be invented. (shrink)