1

This article was originally published in Phnomenologische Forschungen, 2005, Hrsg. von Ernst Wolfgang Orth und Karl-Heinz Lembeck c Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg.

Susanna Lindberg

Hans Jonass theory of Life in the face of Responsibility

The bold and provocative philosophy of Hans Jonass mature period1 is an attempt to answer a single burning question: how could life be an object of responsibility? Or, to put it in another way: given that our time is determined by the overwhelming presence of technology, how can we get aware of the requirements of life on the one hand, and of responsibility on the other? Technology, as a domain of inanimate and extramoral processes, generates a tendency to exclude the fundamental experiences of life and responsibility from the domain of thought and to assign them to the vague region of feeling and faith. Henceforth, the task of philosophy is to comprehend life and responsibility and, what is more, to show the fundamental interdependence of these two problems that might, at the outset, seem to exclude one another. In my paper, I will examine one aspect of this vast problem, namely the concept of life that, according to Hans Jonas, can also open onto ethical considerations. I will start by presenting some methodological problems. Then I will discuss Jonass concept of life. Finally I will present some outlines of the political consequences of Jonass theory.

Methodological considerations

1 Since the publication of The phenomenon of Life in 1966. Jonass earlier work treated gnosticism.

2 I will begin with some methodological considerations. Jonass work is often willingly outrageous. Despite his phenomenological origins, he thinks in terms of teleology instead of intentionality, or of freedom and necessity instead of possibility and impossibility, and he cherishes the notions of interiority and exteriority.2 In general, he braves the

phenomenological interdiction to step beyond the phenomena: not that he would propose a hidden ground that would justify the existence of life on earth, but his description surpasses the given towards certain rational constructions. For him, life is not the problem of the living presence in phenomenological observation. Life is an ontological problem.3 Now, we know how Heidegger reopened the ontological problem as the question of human existence, and of the totality of being as far as it becomes Daseins question. From his perspective, the living being as such appears to be incomprehensible and disquieting4 , and that is how, Jonas observes, nature ends by practically falling outside of Heideggers thought5 (perhaps confined solely to technoscience). Jonas turns precisely towards this nature, whose being has, from Kant to Heidegger, been defined as the limit of the philosophical interrogation, like an undescribable black hole that indistinctly gives being and retires its grounds. Heidegger might still agree with Jonass way of taking natures being as a groundless givenness.6 But Heidegger would not follow Jonass effort to define the essence of this nature, and wonder not only that it is and how it is, but what it is. Through the question what? Jonas enters into the domain of speculations, rational
2 This vocabulary probably makes him more understandable to the scientific modernity that he is primarily addressing. However, a present-day reader would appreciate the supplementary precision he might have achieved if he had confronted some of his predecessors more directly: the 19th century philosophers of nature (who share his concepts) and modern phenomenologists (who share his questions). 3 Das Prinzip Leben, henceforth PL, p. 150. 4 Heidegger, Brief ber den Humanismus, in Wegmarken, p. 323. 5 Nie hat eine Philosophie sich so wenig un die Nature gekmmert wie der Existentialismus [i.e. Heidegger in Sein und Zeit], fr den sie keine wrde behalten hat. (PL 369). However, Jonass principle of life is not alien to Heideggers thought but on the contrary an extension of a Heideggerian way of thinking into a domain that the latter would finally have overlooked. To put it briefly, if Heideggers thought opens out from the experience of death and Arendts from the phenomenon of natality, Jonas examines what happens between these absolute limits starting from the fundamental experience of hunger. In truth, Jonass principle of life could be interpreted as a Heideggerian interpretation of Aristotles De Anima. And in fact, his very first experience of live philosophising was Heideggers seminar on Aristotles De Anima in 1921. (Wissenschaft als persnliches Erlebnis, p, 14.) Furthermore, Jonass approach resembles Heideggers description of the animality in Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik on which Jonas does not comment, unfortunately for us. We will see how Jonas, like Heidegger, examines the animals selfness and justifies this through our possible privative access to the animality, that he bases on out capacity to follow a living beings experience, if not share it (GA 29/30, 49.) Cf. Franoise Dastur: Pour une zoologie privative, ou comment ne pas parler de lanimal, in Alter 3 / 1995. 6 Le secret des commencements nous demeure cache (L 29).

3 constructions and even of mythological illustrations.7 What is life? Can we see it; can we answer to such a question without speculation? Is Jonas right in claiming that representation and consequently speculation is peculiar to man to such an extent that, contrary to what Heidegger says, the faculty of images and the correlative conception of truth as adaequatio are more originary than truth as aletheia?8 The very possibility of Jonass philosophical biology depends on this supposition that he practices consciously without treating it extensively. Life as natures being might be for us strange and most mysterious. Now Jonas does not ponder on the secrecy of the secret but claims, on the contrary, that we can understand (if not necessarily know) the essence of life. According to him, we can understand life because we are living ourselves.9 This leads to two movements. Firstly, we understand the living thanks to a kind of a sympathy or an affinity which allows us to recognise another life experience, even if, on the other hand, its singular experience is precisely what we cannot share.10 Secondly, we understand lower life forms by privation (for instance, the animals have senses without images, the plants have metabolism without senses, etc.) In this way, Jonas establishes a hierarchy of being which starts from pure matter, develops through the simplest living organisms through the higher animals up to the human being.11 Now from an epistemological point of view, these movements are intolerable: imagining another living beings experience through analogy with ourselves and establishing a hierarchy of beings whose summit we ourselves are is an anthropomorphic gesture that relies on imagination. Jonas recognises and assumes this outrage, as well. To start with, Jonas understands life as an experience and an event, which are in any case outside of ordinary epistemological approaches. Either we admit the possibility of somehow understanding another beings experience, or we back ourselves into a sceptics solipsism, which Jonas takes to be simply a logical illusion.

7 PL 10. 8 The chapter Vom Ursprung der Wahrheitserfahrung, PL 292-301. 9 PL 155, L 38. 10 Actually, Jonas says that we do not understand the other by projecting ourselves on him, but on the contrary we understand ourselves because the other (for instance an animal) expresses and communicates to us his experience. L 96-105. 11 PL 45.

4 In the last instance however, Jonas justifies his presumed intellectual faults with an ethical concern. For example, contrary to what Descartes claimed and although we cannot prove it, Jonas thinks that we know that animals can suffer, and that is why we must treat them as feeling creatures. And whatever logical errors this might entail, we are ethically obliged to bring this knowledge into the sphere of philosophy, instead of leaving it to the vague domain of feeling, religion and conviction. On the other hand, putting the human being at the summit of the living world and attributing to him a certain nobility is certainly disturbing but for Jonas, it primarily means that we have an ethical responsibility towards the rest of nature, whereas the inverse is not true. The human beings nobility does not make him the master and commander of nature without engaging a most demanding responsibility that corresponds to the human power of devastation. Such an approach is anthropocentric and even biblical, but it is not nonsensical. It can be elucidated through a comparision to Levinass position. Levinas also thinks that we cannot share the Others experience, but we know that he has one, and this knowledge contributes to our responsibility for him. Jonas simply extends such a responsibility to all of the living world and to its future, and tries to find out what we actually can know about another living beings life knowing that we cannot live it. By giving an ontological foundation to an ethics, Jonas is conscious of making a disputable move. Such an approach is presently accepted neither by applied ethics nor by discourse ethics nor by the phenomenological ethics of, say, Levinas12 . Heidegger, Jonass professor and closest reference, would not use his ontology in order to found an ethical imperative; and Arendt, Jonass lifelong friend, would not found her political considerations on an ontological doctrine. Jonas knows and accepts this, and feels nevertheless an urge to brave what he takes to be a properly modern interdiction. I think that in the last instance, we could justify his approach by stating that the living as such, being incapable of speech and even of the pure address that defines Levinass Other, is definitely incapable of demanding justice in the sphere of politics.13 In order to cope with
12 On Jonass and Levinass disagreement concerning the need of an ontology in an ethics, see Pierre Bourez, Tmoins du futur, 811, 833, 851. 13 Here I mainly follow Giorgio Agambens theory of the politics of life in Homo sacer and LOuvert. De lhomme et de lanimal, which correspond to Jacques Derridas analyses of the relation between justice and language (for instance in Force de loi but also in many other recent works) Following their indications, one

5 the unease this silence creates, we need another view of the foundations of the political. In this regard, the sciences cannot help us, because they have precisely caused this unease by transforming the natural being into a mere object. In this context, Jonass definition of life as an experience also becomes an inquiry into what, in bare life, can appeal to us and engage our responsibility. Jonas does not conclude on a Schopenhauerian compassion nor on an overwhelming obligation in regard to the living. But he endeavors to redetermine the minimal, formal requirements of an ethical situation. For instance: the object of responsibility must be capable of life present, future or past life. And henceforth: the human beings responsibility, being such that he must do what he can, must finally encompass life itself as that which has become his most vulnerable other.

Jonass theory of life Naturally, all of the aforementioned problems must finally be judged in relation to Jonass theory of life. So, what does Jonas understand by life? For Jonas, life is an ontological category. It is his interpretation of being that is particularly indebted to Aristotles On the Soul and to Heideggers teaching. In The Principle of Life, he reminds us of the two principal points of view on life in the history of western thought.14 The Ancients considered being in general as life (and confronted

death as the major inexplicable mystery). On the contrary, since the Renaissance the Moderns saw natural beings as lifeless bodies submitted to mechanical movements (henceforth, life is the inexplicable problem). Turning against the prevailing scientific world view much in the same way as Heidegger in his critique of the epoch of the technique, Jonas does not seek to re-establish the antique vision of nature as the sacred. Instead, he wishes to pierce the contemporary, scientific world views blind spot by opening an ontology of life that modern sciences would presuppose and yet ignore, or even repress.

could take the absolute impossibility of sharing a language with the simply-living as the basis of the political dilemma that it constitutes. 14 PL ch. 1.

6 This is why he articulates a biological ontology which, according to him, also implies all technologies and human sciences. In what follows, I will present Jonass theory of life through three key concepts: being, self and teleology.

1. Being. Life is Jonass interpretation of being. A living being does not subsist, like the dead body of cartesian mechanics. Its being is a having-to-be.15 It is purely its own act of being.16 It ressembles Heideggers Dasein17 , whose existence is a purely transitive having-to-be, except that a living being as such, for instance an amoeba, does not question its own being: the difference between Jonass life and Heideggers existence is precisely this question that reveals existence, and not life, to itself. Life remains an ontological category because the living beings having-to-be is its struggle with its nonbeing18 . Life is a beings auto-affirmation against the constant and overwhelming possibility of its nonbeing. In other words, life is essentially mortal, and according to Jonas all living beings, and not only man, know the anguish before death.19 A living being is a tension between birth and death, coming form nothing and passing on to nothing and, stretched between these absolute limits, is a constant becoming.

2. Self and world. According to Jonass fundamental thesis, any living being as such is a self20 . This is a controversial point. It has been said that Jonass concept of self is a mere transposition of the human beings own self-understanding onto all living beings: it would be a preconstituted entity that prevents us from seeing life as an auto-constitution and an individuation.21 However, as Jonas says that self is not a stable state but a free
15 PL 158. L 45. 16 PL 55. Le fardeau et la grce dtre mortel, 40. 17 Technik, Medizin, Ethik, henceforth TME, p. 84. 18 PL 19, L 29. As Strachan Donneley puts it in Hans Jonas: La philosophie de la nature et lthique de la responsabilit, the no to non-being makes being fundamentally dramatic (op. cit., p. 81.) 19 PL 19-21. 20 P.ex. PL 39, L 46. 21 Jonas notion of selfness disturbs, for instance, Renaud Barbaras. In an excellent study, which is also rare because it specifically treats Jonass concept of life, he states that Jonass selfness presupposes a preconstituted individuality, which prevents him from seeing the true being of life (La phnomnologie de la vie chez Hans Jonas, p. 50) and from developing an authentic phenomenology of life (op. cit. p. 54). However, I believe one should apply to Jonas himself the phrase that Barbaras wants to direct against him:

7 movement of creating oneself from one instant to another, the issue is far from being evident.22 I believe the difficulty is due less to the utilisation of the notion of self than to the slight obscurity of Jonass notion of form. What does Jonas mean by self? Selfness is always a relation to oneself. When selfness characterises even the simplest living beings, like amoebas, it cannot be a selfconsciousness. In this regard, the simple definition of life as a having-to-be opens up the dimension of primitive selfness: here the simple ontological auto-affirmation bends the living being back onto itself. For Jonas, the question of selfness is coextensive with the question of the world. According to him, living means being-in-a-world and having-a-world or, in other words, life is a transcendence.23 The ontological character of having-a-world presents the world as the other that does not just occur to the living being but conditions its very possibility of being. This other is the second factor that turns the living being back onto itself. When for Heidegger, the human being has a world and the living being is poor-of-world24 , Jonas considers that all living beings have a world, whereas the human beings distinctive feature would be his capacity of having himself, too, in his images, which would be impossible for the animals.25 However, when the relation to the world is defined as a having, whether it be rich or poor, it means that the living being is not one with its world but separated from it; this separation is characterised by the living beings effort to appropriate (something of) its world. In other words, self is not coextensive with the world but oddly separated from it.

We have to understand life not as a property of an already constituted living being, but as the act by which it constitutes itself and individuates itself. (Op. cit., p. 54.) 22 Jonas says: Das Selbst des einzelnen Lebens is allem brigen als Aussenwelt oder Fremdem entgegengesetzt doch ebendie Entgegensetzung aktualisiert sich, durch die Transzendenz (die auf ihr beruht und das Verhltnis des Gegenber vom Selbst her vollzieht), als Aufnahme des usseren qua usseren in das Innen oder das Ausser-sich-sein des Innen beim usseren. [] Schliesslich die Hinflligkeit dieser Existenz, die die direkte Kehrseite der Souvernitt ihrer Selbststiftung ist: Die sich konstituierende Identitt, eben weil sie von Augenblick zu Augenblick funktionelles Erzeugnis und nicht bestehender Zustand ist, ist von prekrer, widerruflicher Dauer (PL 182). And: Je crois une subjectivit sans sujet, cest--dire la dissmination dune intriorit apptitive germinale travers dinombrables particules individuelles, plutt qu son unit originaire lintrieur dun sujet mtaphysique total (cit. in C & R Larrre, Du bon usage de la nature, p. 240. 23 PL, 159. 24 Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 261. 25 PL, 308.

8 Mortality and world-relation determine the finitude of the living being. According to Jonas, the living beings birth and death open up a primary temporal sense of lifes finitude. The otherness of the world opens up a primary spatial sense of the living beings finitude.26 As both dimensions of lifes finitude have their roots in life as an act, they are actively synthetised by and as the living beings life and not given externally. In passing, we can note that because the living beings essence is its exposure to something other, there are necessarily many beings: the idea of exposure and the idea of the plurality of being go hand in hand and one supposes the other. Jonas studies the world relation of the living being on three levels, which correspond to the divisions of Aristotles Peri Psykhe: 1. metabolism, 2. the animals perception, movement and feeling, and 3. the human beings capacity of imaging. On the most elementary level, any living being as such has a world in its metabolism. Metabolism is generally discarded from philosophical reflection as a simple process of absorption and excretion in view of remaining the same. On the contrary, Jonas gives it a highly philosophical status as the first, ontological manifestation of freedom.27 Of course, a living beings freedom is conditional: the exterior world is a domain of necessity facing it. It is as impossible to choose another factual world as it is to choose ones birth or immortality. Nevertheless, it is a freedom: metabolism shows that a living being is not just an inert object of external influences but it relates actively to its environment. Even on the simplest level, metabolism is creative because it implies choice and chance.28 Metabolism produces a division of interiority and exteriority (and not the other way round: interiority and exteriority are not preconstituted, self-sufficient entities but are constituted in this intercourse). The interiority is constituted as an affection of something exterior in such a way that the affected being becomes affected itself.29 Jonas says that the living being is exposed30: in the core of its being it is open to the world. In other words, a living beings self is an ecstasy, that is to say something that has the ground of its being

26 PL 185 27 PL 153, L 27-28. 28 Cf. PL 161, L 48. 29 PL 161. 30 PL 181, L 47.

9 outside of itself. There is no separate interority into which the living being might retire, for its interiority is its exposition to the exterior world. So the living being is simultaneously separated from the world and open to it, and it is this exception in the midst of the tissue of being. Jonas calls this relation of having a world (which also implies the possibility of missing it and being mistaken about it) an experience.31 It is a free experience of

constituting oneself with what the world gives or denies, an experience where choice and hazard play fundamental roles. This experience is essentially temporal: the living beings self is never ready but it is constituted anew every instant.32 Yet as far as there is a selfidentity, Jonas thinks we must suppose an elementary temporal synthesis of such changing states33 , and this implies that in an elementary sense all living beings have a memory and a relation to the future34 or, rather, a trace and a desire of experience. In the juncture of exposition and alterity, life is an originary auto-production, automimesis or auto-technique it is the originary movement of fysis such as Aristotle has presented it. Below, we will come to certain critical points which might delimit the scope of this affirmation. The fundamental freedom of life is rooted in metabolism, but its adventurous character becomes manifest in animal life. When pure metabolism is based on contact, the proper character of animal life is distance, abstndigkeit35 . Thanks to the distance, the animal is not simply surrounded by an immediate exteriority, but synthesises a real spacetime, a genuine world. The distance has three principal dimensions36 : perception opens out a spatial and proto-theoretical gap; mobility opens out a temporal, proto-practical gap, and feeling relates the animal to itself as a desiring, teleologically active creature who is always separated from its aims. The animal is essentially a being of passion37 , where passion denotes a distance from the source of desire. Its freedom is manifested in its
31 PL 159, L 46. 32 PL 155, L 43. 33 PL 152, L 25. 34 PL 162-163. 35 PL 187. 36 PL 184-194, L 49-54. 37 PL 192.

10 capacity to transcend itself by responding to its passion with an action. According to Jonas, such an action has a teleological character. Being the root of any living beings action, teleology is not a conscious, willing procedure but a constant, instinctive invention, by which the animal reaches the source of its passion: its world and, correlatively, itself. Teleology is a way of following the detour (Umweg)38 through the world that brings the living being back to itself. Let me put it in other words: if metabolism shows life as a border within the world, animal life shows the width of this border. This width is an absolute abyss that the animal crosses constantly without ever closing the gap (each crossing is a leap over an impossibility of rejoining the edges). Animality means crossing the distance towards the world and following the detour through the world. Its multiple activity could be condensed in the archaic polysemy of the world sense that has often been pointed out: the animal senses its world, feels itself, acts in the direction of its being-in-the-world, and finally the capacity of such a sensible directedness can be called the animals sense, if not reason. Jonas locates the third kind of a world relation in the transanimality of the human being. This is not the place to present Jonass theory of the human being. I simply state that for him, the differentia specifica of man is his capacity of imaging. The capacity of imaging extends the human world far beyond the simple animal opening towards absent places, times and persons (and not simply distant ones). The image gives place to fiction and theory, and it equally founds the possibility of a genuine social world. In order to have a full idea of the transanimality of the human being, we still ought to consider homo pictors capacity of responsibility. For the human beings responsibility is for Jonas a massive thesis, even if he does not include the ethical specificity of the human being in his deduction of different forms of life. I think that in the end, the human beings capacity of responsibility is finally the most human counterpart of the straightforward teleology of life. Such would be the outlines of Jonass theory of selfness that is developed through different ways of having a world. Let me now return to the problem I mentioned earlier. Does Jonass recourse to the notion of self exclude him from a genuine phenomenology of life? No doubt this is so if the phenomenological rigour obliges us to constrain ourselves
38 PL 191, L 54.

11 to what appears. However, when one examines another beings experience one necessarily confronts something that does not present itself to us, and I think nothing prevents us from calling such an experience a selfness in an ontological consideration. But in that case, such a self is more than a simple extrapolation of the human selfconsciousness onto other living beings: it refers to the singular plurality of existence. One problem remains, however. Jonas often assimilates his notions of self and identity to that of form. In consequence, he often explains metabolism as if the self met the world simply like a form meets matter: filling itself with different materials but remaining fundamentally same.39 Such a view on metabolism, especially if it is extended to

perception, movement, feeling and image, is effectively outdated. Moreover, this interpretation of self-identity contradicts Jonass own ontological point of view, according to which metabolism is precisely the origin of the most fundamental freedom and creativity, thanks to which the living being precisely does not remain the same.40 In order to

evaluate this incoherence which remains indelible in Jonass system we have to examine Jonass notion of form more closely, which is for him a teleological issue.

3. Teleology. Jonas explains lifes becoming as an internal teleology and he does it rather mischievously, knowing that teleological explanations have long since been discarded from science and philosophy.41 At stake is then the understanding of the very essence of teleology. Jonas refers to Aristotles presentation of the teleological movement of life42 but he modifies it by examining the teleological constitution of the form expressly as a movement of being. Jonas opts for teleology in order to avoid certain dead ends in the consideration of living beings. According to him, the mechanist explanations simply miss the phenomenon
39 PL 151-156. 40 According to Jonas, this should already be evident through the observation of various ages of most living beings: PL119. 41 What are the advantages of speaking in terms of teleology instead of intentionality when, as it should become evident in what follows, they describe very similar movements? Firstly, intentionality primarily describes a schematisation of the world, whereas teleology is also a movement of being. Intentionality is included in teleology. Secondly, for Jonas, access to the questions of being prepare the ground for an ethical inquiry, presupposing that the foundation of ethics is finally a question of birth and death. I could add a third motivation, even though Jonas does not treat it: teleology provides a link to the 19th century philosophy of life which is a more or less secret motivation of all the phenomenologies of life. 42 PL 16.

12 of life, and there is certainly no point in returning to creationist ones, either.43 Darwinism does not take us much further, because the only resource it accords to the living being is adaptation, whereas Jonas stresses the importance of lifes creative responses to the external situations.44 Teleology is for him the name of a situation where a freedom confronts a necessity. It mainly characterises a selfs relation to its world. The living being is not some thing that could reach out towards an outer world: it is this gesture of reaching out; its activity is moving towards the world and coming back to itself. This endless transcending, this detour, is the fundamental sense of its teleological activity. Jonass explication of having a world shows how teleology is the law of making contact and traversing a distance, crossing a gap and following the detour. Teleology is for Jonas the law of the experience that reveals the concrete space-time. But what is teleology, if it can thus give law to something that by definition does not tolerate any law, that is to say, to experience? On the first level, Jonass teleology is simply the law of the living beings activity based on its desire: it is the beings own capacity of setting goals and pursuing them by different means.45 Even if we cannot really distinguish to what extent an aim is given by the world (an occasion) and to what extent it is set by the agent (a desire), we can consider it as being internal to the agent. The aim, however, remains somewhat external to the action itself and commands it as a value. On a more fundamental level, underlying and motivating such partial teleological actions, the internal teleology of life itself does not follow any even relatively external values. Its activity has no other reason than itself. Teleology explains the movement of being itself: the act of being. If teleology commands the primary act of being, its aim is to be - and not to realise and maintain a predetermined form, whether that is understood as the platonic idea of, say, a perfect horse or as the genetic code of a horse.46 Naturally, in one way or another, such a form is realised in the beings life, but this realization does not

43 PL 65. 44 PL 91. 45 PL 163. Cf. L 41: il faut comprendre comme acte le factum morphologique de la continuit mtabolisante. 46 PL 89-90.

13 command its teleological activity. Structurally, it is a part of the necessity that constitutes the beings world: it only provides a framework within which the actual activity remains free or, in other words, it determines the particular conditions for a singular activity. Teleology commands being in its singularity.47 Finally, the teleology of life aims at being alive, only this aim is no longer a value (an external aim), but rather an internal, unconditional good. The originary judgment at the root of the teleological movement of the living being is: it is good to live. In other words: life is not a value and it does not aim at survival as the highest value. The teleology of the living being is an internal teleology, and that is why it does not proceed from a form, if form is understood as a morphological figure, a stable idea or a superior intemporal being. Such a form, presented as the cause and the end of the process, is always an external principle, whereas life is a process of internal teleology. However, an internal teleology can be said to proceed from another kind of a form: a form of form-giving itself. We could say that instead of reproducing a form as if it were a model, it creates one. The proper name of such a form is freedom, which is, according to Jonas, a fundamental ontological character of life as such.48 On this fundamental ontological level the exercise of freedom does not aim at a stable product of a free will. Its aim is freedom itself, and the form of freedom is precisely the emancipation from given, predetermined forms. That is why the internal teleology is not a stable process of reproducing the same, but, at the limits of the beings finitude, a surprising and even a creative event and for Jonas, such a free event is precisely what can be described as a teleology rather than as a process. In fact, the form created by the internal teleology is entirely dynamic: it is a capacity of being. On more specified levels of analysis, Jonas shows that the internal teleology is also the capacity to be what one is, only once again this does not mean incorporating a definite figure, but exercising more and more freely ones capacities of moving, of sensing, or of imaging. Nothing is said of the eventual products of such capacities, for it is a question of opening capacities, remaining capable, and becoming capable of facing new situations. Teleology does not follow ideas, it creates them; such
47 Singularit et hterogneit radicales [] voil ce qui caractrise lipsit de lorganisme. (L 43.) 48 PL 157.

14 ideas in their turn are no stable entities but rather traces of events. Teleology is a capacity of creating a capacity.49 The form produced by such an internal teleology is a capacity of being: firstly the sheer capacity of being alive; secondly the supplementary capacities of metabolism, sense, movement, feeling, image, etc. On all levels, the teleological activity simultaneously requires and produces an openness of senses and a freedom of actions. For Jonas, the proper character of life is that its means become ends in themselves.50 Life is not a simple question of surviving but also a question of what survives: which capacities seek their plenitude.51 Now we see that the pure capacity of being alive is an individual one:

existence takes place in singular beings. On the other hand, the specific capacities, if not their particular use, are proper to entire species, and we could take them for forms in a more traditional sense. Jonas does not make specific analyses of such particular forms. Evidently he does not take them for eternal ideas, but he does not give a specific analysis of the temporality of the forms, either: he hardly mentions the problem of the origin of the species and finally says little about their possible extinction. There is one exeption, however: the human being himself. Jonas does not meditate on his origin nor destination, but he asserts that we ought to preserve the image of man. Now if the proper nature of life is freedom, and if human freedom includes the capacities of technical auto-transformation and even suicide, why should we suddenly restrain the use of this freedom within the limits of the human being such as he is presently? This is a very complicated question that cannot be treated without entering into the question of Hans Jonass politics.

49 A thorough evaluation of Jonass teleology requires a confrontation with Nietzsche. Jonass teleology resembles Nietzsches will to power, but breaks with it, since Jonass life does not seek power as such but a qualified power, a positive capacity which is not simply a pure and empty capacity. A more precise comparision with Nietzsche might explain, for instance, why Jonas seems to limit the growth of lifes capacities on the image of man, that he surprisingly refuses to change even if a criterium of this image of man is an eternity that resembles Nietzsches eternal return of the same. (PL 383 and the ensuing explication of immortality.) 50 L 56, Le fardeau et la grce dtre mortel, 46. 51 PL 193.

15 Politics of Life To conclude, I would like to give a rough sketch of the political consequences of Jonass theory of life. In the last instance, his conception of life does not correspond to specific scientific questions nor to purely philosophical contemplation. It takes responsibility for an ethics, an ethics of the technological civilisation52 and opens onto a political consideration. Jonas addresses the problem of life because, according to him, only the living can be an object of a responsibility, even if this possibility does not entail an obligation53 . The responsibility does not encompass Being as a whole (Sein), because its being or nonbeing does not depend on us54 , whereas the living (Lebendiges) are by definition those whose being is precarious and vulnerable. On the other hand, in contrast to the traditional ethical theories, the responsibility should not encompass the human being alone. For Jonas, this is not so much because of a compassion towards different living beings nor because of the admiration of the beauty of nature55 , but because mans existence is entirely conditioned by the nature of which he is a part. Jonass categorical responsibility starts where existence is at stake: that is why it addresses life as such. The ethical responsibility towards nature has anthropocentric grounds, and that is why Jonass famous imperative commands: act in such a way that the effects of your action are compatible with permanency of an authentically human life on the earth.56 In its apparent simplicity, the imperative has very complicated implications. Firstly, if Jonas criticises traditional ethics for applying solely to man57 and expends so much effort in order to show the fundamental unity of man and nature58 , why does he end by restoring the primacy of man? One can answer by stating that Jonass argument might be necessarily anthropomorphic but is not anthropocentric, since the center of Jonass
52 Versuch einer Ethik fr die Technologische Zivilisation is the subtitle of Das Prinzip Verantwortung (PV). 53 Nur das Lebendige also in seiner Bedrftigkeit und Bedrohtheit und im Prinzip alles Lebendige kann berhaupt Gegenstand von Verantwortung sein, mu es aber darum noch nicht sein: ein Lebendes zu sein ist erst die notwendige Bedingung dafr im Gegenstande. (PV 185.) 54 PV 226. 55 He feels it nevertheless. PV 29. 56 PV 36 (there are several formulations). 57 PV 21. 58 It is the very program of Das Prinzip Leben. PL 17.

16 thought is an ontology of being as metabolism, which is not a specifically human condition, even if we find it through the consideration of the human being.59 Nevertheless, the very formulation of Jonass imperative only addresses human life, not life as such. Jonas certainly accords a specific value to human life such as we know it. Firstly, the transanimality of man60, that is to say his capacity of image, is for Jonas a good in itself. But actually, without really stating it in this way, Jonas shows above all that the human beings capacity of responsibility, and the ensuing obligation to be responsible, sets him apart from all other living beings. Only the human being, and not the rest of nature, must be responsible. And the human being is also responsible for this possibility of responsibility that one finds nowhere else in nature: he is responsible for himself as the being capable of responsibility. This brings us to another difficulty, namely to the question of what the authentically human life might be. At times Jonas says that we should conserve the image of man. Is not such a recourse to an authenticity and even to an idea most suspect? Should we not reject as metaphysico-theological even his maxim according to which the extinction of the human species is an evil per se, and that any action that might cause it is therefore prohibited?61 Why, indeed, should the human species exist and why should its existence be somehow authentic? To begin with, Jonass image of man is not a determination, a specific quality nor a stable form.62 On the contrary, he evokes it in order to thwart the desire to produce the perfect man that characterised certain modern utopias. Jonass imperative rather commands the preservation of the finitude and the openness of the human beings essence.63 Or, to speak like Heidegger, the human beings essence should remain a question. Strictly speaking, Jonass imperative only englobes the existence of man: we should not determine how the future man can live, but only that he can live.64 In this sense, the imperative only aims at avoiding the total extinction, and does this by

59 This is Carlos Foppas argument in Ltre humain dans la philosophie de la biologie, p. 188. 60 P. ex. PL, 287. Outil, image et tombeau. du transanimal dans lhumain in volution et libert, 59-82. 61 PV 90-92. 62 Cf. p. ex. Jacques Dewitte, Prservation de lhumanit et limage de lhomme, p. 47-48. 63 Cf. Dominique Janicaud, Ladieu critique aux utopies in Aux fondements dune thique contemporaine. H. Jonas et H.T.Engelhardt, d. Gilbert Hottois, p. 101. 64 PV 80, 250.

17 preserving the possibility of a future world, not the reality of its inhabitants. More exactly, Jonas does not reduce life to a mere fact of existing, but he includes certain qualifications: the originary freedom of any living being and the responsibility of the human being. The conservation of an authentically human life means the conservation of these capacities. It does not mean that we should predetermine how this freedom should be exercised. For instance, it is properly human to kill other living beings and humans65 . It is also properly human to form oneself according to various images which also, by nature, restrain ones freedom66. But Jonass imperative requires us to prevent these possibilities of murder and control from totally extinguishing human freedom and responsibility.67 Finally, Jonas has been severely criticised for his doubts concerning the capacity of democracy of taking on the responsibility for future life. Indeed, he suspects that the only form of government that can let future weigh more in its decisions than the immediate utility would be a government of a few wise persons in the style of Platos Republic.68 Of course, this is a terrifying and chimerical idea that Jonas does not find desirable.69 However, because certain opponents have not hesitated to conclude that Jonas actually promotes a totalitarian solution,70 I feel obliged to touch the problem. Even Jonass

personal experience should explain why he is firmly opposed to all kinds of totalitarianism. On the contrary, he defends political liberties as being indispensable for human dignity.71
65 PV 246-247. 66 PV 289-292. 67 In Prinzip Verantwortung, Jonas singles out two main threats to human existence. The possibility of the total extinction of humankind is naturally incarnated in a nuclear disaster or, more generally, in an overwhelming ecocatastrophe. The possibility of the extinction of human freedom and capacity of responsibility is incarnated in certain social techniques like prenatal selection and the administration of tranquillizers to children (PV 50-53): in these cases, the possibility of an internal teleological action is thwarted by the imposition of an overpowering external aim. 68 Dies erhebt die alte Frage nach der Macht der Weisen [] Welche Kraft soll die Zukunft in der Gegenwart vertreten? Das ist eine Frage fr die politische Philosophie, zu der ich meine eigenen, wahrscheinlich chimrischen und sicher unpopulren Ideen habe. (PV 55-56.) Das wirkliche Problem ist dies: Wenn, wie wir glauben, nur eine Elite ethisch und intellektuell die von uns angezeigte Zukunftsverantwortung bernehmen kann - wie wird eine solche Elite erzeugt und wie mit der Macht ausgestattet, sie auszuben? (PV, 263.) 69 TME 298, Technik, Freiheit und Pflicht, in Wissenschaft als persnliches Erlebnis, p. 42. 70 Gilbert Hottois, Prsentation de Aux fondements dune thique contemporaine. H. Jonas et H.T.Engelhardt, d. Gilbert Hottois, p. 16. 71 PV 298-299, 304-305. However, as Jonas does not analyse in detail the question of political freedom, the question of the diversity and discord permitted by the image of man remains open. In this vein, Nathalie Depraz argues that Jonas ignores the question of human plurality and that his thought lacks a democratic dimension, whereas Markus Dederich argues, on the contrary, that Jonass ethics is precisely no based on exclusion but reposes on alterity and difference. (Nathalie Depraz: Die Spur der Ambe in Hans Jonas

18 But if the ethics for a technological civilisation cannot be realised by a mass, it does not depend on the sole individual, either: in this sense, it is a genuinely political task with no definite solution in view. Jonas distinguishes his ethics of the future from the two commonest forms of the politics of the future, messianism and utopism. Messianism can only wait for the Messiah but not act in view of his arrival, whereas action is henceforth necessary. Utopism rather closes than opens the future, for by wanting to reform man it generally ends by fettering his freedom. This implies, among others, that Jonass counsel of the wise should not act on man himself, this being the task of each generations own present politics. It should simply preserve the most general possibility of human life, and therefore also the possibility of his political life. Its task is a critical control of the technology, not of the political society, which must follow its own destinies. Since Hans Jonass ethics examines our responsibility towards those who are not yet born, it cannot address any singular existence or selfness. His unconditional imperative only encompasses the possibility of the existence of a future humanity, in other words, it only commands the preservation of a world as the condition sine qua non of any human existence as such. Such a task cannot open onto a specific political strategy: it rather requires the invention of a politics capable of preserving its own ultimate conditions.

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19 Hans Jonas: Wissenschaft als persnliches Erlebnis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gttingen, 1987.

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20 Journal Phnomenologie 20/2003. Catherine Larrre et Raphal Larrre, Du bon usage de la nature, Alto, Aubier 1997.