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Is”: Hans Jonas and the Revival of a Teleological Ethical Theory DERIVING “OUGHT FROM “IS”: HANS JONAS AND THE REVIVAL OF A TELEOLOGICAL ETHICAL THEORY A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Joseph M. Farrell August 2010 Examining Committee Members: Lewis Gordon, Advisory Chair, Philosophy Joseph Margolis, Philosophy Jane Gordon, Political Science Joseph Schwartz, External Member, Political Science i © Copyright 2010 by Joseph M. Farrell ii ABSTRACT Hans Jonas ranks among a small but expanding group of recent ethicists who have argued that a robust ethical theory must account for human ontological considerations. He is among those who make claims that such considerations issue from biological foundations. In The Phenomenon of Life , he reclaims elements of the Aristotelian biological ontology of the soul while adjusting this ontology to the theory of evolution. The first problem with Aristotelian biological ontology, one suffering from essentialism, is the confrontation with the biological flux of species, presented in the Darwinian theory of natural selection. The dissertation explains that Jonas was correct in his return to Aristotle, insofar as there are elements of human beings that are natural and universal. The task is to follow Jonas by constructing a robust philosophical anthropology. Jonas’s philosophical anthropology understands human beings as nature’s most magnificent and advanced examples of what he calls “needful freedom.” Jonas’s argument includes a refutation of reductive materialism and epiphenomenalism, one that leaves the possibilities of the human soul/consciousness and freedom in at least as good a position as offered by Kant. His argument is also an attempt to rescue ontology, human nature, and ethics from the relativism of Heideggerian thought. He does this by replacing Heidegger’s concept of “thrown projection” with an idea of “projection” based on biological ontology. With this ontological foundation in place, Jonas’s “ethics of the future” sees human beings as the caretakers not only of themselves but of the totality of nature and not simply for anthropocentric reasons. Jonas’s philosophical anthropology was incomplete insofar as it lacked an accounting of sexual reproduction, a key element for Jonas’s ethical theory where political responsibility is modeled after parenthood. After offering a critique of Jonas’s incomplete philosophical anthropology and the gap it leaves for his ethical theory, this dissertation shows that the value of his contribution remains intact. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the advice, assistance, and overall collegial good will of my fellow philosophers, mentors, and teachers over the years of my education. Some of you have been dynamic and provocative, others kind and nurturing, but all of you are of the mind of Socrates, ultimately, that a life spent in the pursuit of the truth is a life well lived. I thank you for the inspiration that you have given me and the perspiration that you have caused me. I would like to thank Dr. William Desmond, Dr. Timothy Stapleton, Dr. Drew Leder, Dr. Malcolm Clark and Dr. Dale Snow, who taught me at Loyola College in Maryland, who lit the philosophical fire in me, and who taught me that in order to be a great philosopher, you must be a great teacher, first. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Charley Hardwick and Dr. Phillip Scribner at The American University, who taught me about academic rigor. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Thomas Lynch who has taught me about rigor in general. Lastly, I would like to give special acknowledgment to Dr. Lewis Gordon of Temple University, who had confidence in me and this project when I lacked enough of that in myself. iv DEDICATION I dedicate my dissertation to my sons Anthony Santiago Farrell (Tony), Neil Michael Farrell and Jack William Farrell, the lights of my life and my reason for being; to my wife Flor DeMaria Farrell, who stood by me in the cave and pushed me up the steps; and to my parents who helped me break my chains, built me a staircase, gave me legs for the climb, and who made me who I am today: ME. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: HANS JONAS'S RECOVERY OF ARISTOTLE ………………....……13 The Importance of Aristotle?..................................................................................13 On the Supposed Downfall of Aristotle and Teleology.…………………………16 DNA to the Rescue of Aristotle and Jonas.….…………………………………...31 CHAPTER 3: HANS JONAS'S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY .......................37 Jonas’s Ontological Distinction: Metabolism.........................................................37 Mediation and the Great Divide …………………………………………………57 Vision, Theory, and Practice: What it Means to Be a Human Being …………....69 The Image of Man: Who We Are and Who We Should Be………………..……80 Jonas and the Problem of Automatomorphism …………….........…….………….89 CHAPTER 4: HANS JONAS’S REVIVAL OF ETHICAL THEORY…………..……101 Ethical Theories and Moral Theories....................................................................101 Hume’s Guillotine………………………………………………………………105 Kant’s Deontological Moral Theory: Aimless Duty…………………………....108 The Utilitarian Problem of Consistency: Too Many Targets Spoil the Archer....116 One Reprieve from the Guillotine: Wittgenstein’s Legacy..……........................123 A Second Reprieve: Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology……..….……………128 Hans Jonas’s Charge of Nihilism against Heidegger......…....…..……...…........133 CHAPTER 5: HANS JONAS'S ETHICAL AND MORAL THEORY..........................141 CHAPTER 6: DEFENDING JONAS’S ONTOLOGY AND ETHICAL THEORY......168 Among the Vanguard…………………………………………………………..168 The Charge of Essentialism.................................................................................170 The Charge of Using Teleological Explanations in Biology……...…..……….177 The Charge of Anthropomorphism…………………………………………….187 The Charge of Violating Hume’s Guillotine…………………………………...193 The Sum of Criticisms External to Jonas’s Work….………………………..…194 vi The Charge of Anthropocentrism………………………………………………196 The Missing Account of Sexual Reproduction ………………………………..204 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................213 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................220 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The dissertation that follows investigates the connection between Hans Jonas’s The Phenomenon of Life and The Imperative of Responsibility and is a defense of Hans Jonas’s work in ontology, philosophical anthropology, and ethics. My purpose in undertaking this project is, most generally, revealing an example of the truth of the old adage that one should never throw away the baby with the bath water. Hans Jonas realized this with regard to Aristotle even in the face of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Toward this end and first, I wish to explore and explain the value and relevance of Hans Jonas's recovery of elements of Aristotelian ontology, philosophy of biology, and psychology and how this project has been on the mind of some eminent biologists even in the face of evolutionary biology. Second, I wish to explain the innovative way that Hans Jonas used Aristotelian concepts in conjunction with evolutionary biology to give a more adequate account of philosophical anthropology as against all reductionist versions of materialism. Third, I wish to explain and contextualize Jonas’s ethical and moral theories as a direct challenge to “Hume’s Guillotine,” a direct challenge to all solely principle-based moral theories, a direct challenge to the relativism of Heideggerian existentialism, and argue that Jonas's challenges are needed if an adequate theory of valuation is to be revealed and developed. Hans Jonas was a philosopher of German Jewish heritage, born in Monchengladbach, Germany, in 1903. He studied under Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Rudolf Bultmann and earned his doctorate, summa cum laude , from the University of Marburg in 1928 after writing an existential interpretation of the Gnostic 1 religion drawing on the thought of Heidegger. A few years later in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power, Jonas fled Germany for Jerusalem, where he taught for a number of years. He served in the British Army during World War II and in the Israeli military before working as a professor in Canada and then at the New School for Social Research where he taught from 1956 until his retirement in 1977. Among the greatest difficulties for Jonas over the course of his life were leaving Germany and his family behind in 1933. He was never to see either of his parents again and later discovered that his mother had fallen victim to the Nazis in the Auschwitz concentration camp after offering up her emigration visa for Jerusalem to her son Georg, who was prisoner at the Dachau camp in 1938.1 Coupling these experiences with those of a soldier both during World War II and after, one can see through
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