Abstract
Hans Jonas was a philosopher who looked nihilism in the eye and courageously stood his ground. He did so by volunteering to serve against the Nazis in World War II, by discovering the links to nihilism in his thought of his teacher Martin Heidegger and by developing a novel philosophy of nature that took its lessons from both Aristotle and Darwin. Jonas’s philosophy of organic nature – his rehabilitation of the soul as a relevant notion for biology – provided prescient insights for the still developing fields of bioethics and environmental ethics.
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Further Reading
Aristotle. 2001. On the soul. Translated by Joe Sachs. Santa Fe: Green Lion Press.
Jonas, H. 1963. The gnostic religion (2nd ed.). Boston: Beacon.
Jonas, H. 1966. The phenomenon of life (p. 213). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jonas, H. 1974. Philosophical essays: From ancient creed to technological man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jonas, H. 1984. The imperative of responsibility. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Jonas, H. 1996. Mortality and morality: A search for the good after Auschwitz (p. 49). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Nietzsche, F. 1954. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin.
Pascal, B. 1966. Pensees. New York: Penguin.
Wiese, Christian (ed.) 2008. Memoirs: Hans Jonas. Waltham: Brandeis University Press.
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Rubenstein, A. Hans Jonas: A Study in Biology and Ethics. Soc 46, 160–167 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-008-9175-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-008-9175-4