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The Legacy of Hans Jonas Hans Jonas The Legacy of Hans Jonas Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life Edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Christian Wiese LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data the legacy of Hans Jonas : judaism and the phenomenon of life / edited by Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Christian Wiese. p. cm. This volume originated in a conference at Arizona State University (ASU) on November 6–7, 2005. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16722-3 (alk. paper) 1. Jonas, Hans, 1903–1993—Congresses. 2. Philosophy, Jewish—Congresses. 3. Philosophy of nature—Congresses. 4. Life—Congresses. 5. Existentialism— Congresses. I. Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava, 1950– II. Wiese, Christian, 1961– III. Title. B3279.J664J83 2008 193—dc22 2008015711 ISBN 978 90 04 16722 3 © Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill Academic Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands To Lore Jonas, who has shared Jonas’s life and helped perpetuate his legacy. CONTENTS Contributors ................................................................................ xi Acknowledgments ....................................................................... xix Preface Understanding Jonas: An Interdisciplinary Project Hava Tirosh-Samuelson ............................................................... xxi Introduction Ethics after Auschwitz: Hans Jonas’s Notion of Responsibility in a Technological Age ................................... 1 Richard Wolin PART ONE A GERMAN-JEWISH INTELLECTUAL Chapter One Hans Jonas’s Position in the History of German Philosophy ................................................................ 19 Vittorio Hösle Chapter Two Hans Jonas in Marburg, 1928 .......................... 39 Steven M. Wasserstrom Chapter Three Ressentiment—A Few Motifs in Hans Jonas’s Early Book on Gnosticism ...................................................... 73 Micha Brumlik Chapter Four Hans Jonas and Research on Gnosticism from a Contemporary Perspective .................................................. 91 Kurt Rudolph Chapter Five Pauline Theology in the Weimar Republic: Hans Jonas, Karl Barth, and Martin Heidegger ................... 107 Benjamin Lazier viii contents Chapter Six Despair and Responsibility: Affi nities and Differences in the Thought of Hans Jonas and Günther Anders ...................................................................... 131 Konrad Paul Liessmann Chapter Seven Ernst Bloch’s Prinzip Hoffnung and Hans Jonas’s Prinzip Verantwortung ........................................... 149 Michael Löwy Chapter Eight Zionism, the Holocaust, and Judaism in a Secular World: New Perspectives on Hans Jonas’s Friendship with Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt ..... 159 Christian Wiese Chapter Nine The Immediacy of Encounter and the Dangers of Dichotomy: Buber, Levinas, and Jonas on Responsibility .......................................................................... 203 Micha H. Werner Chapter Ten Hans Jonas and Secular Religiosity ................... 231 Ron Margolin PART TWO THE PHENOMENON OF LIFE AND THE THREAT OF EXTINCTION: THEORETICAL BIOLOGY, BIOETHICS, AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY Chapter Eleven Hans Jonas and Ernst Mayr: On Organic Life and Human Responsibility ............................................. 261 Strachan Donnelley Chapter Twelve Natural-Law Judaism?: The Genesis of Bioethics in Hans Jonas, Leo Strauss, and Leon Kass .......... 287 Lawrence Vogel Chapter Thirteen Cloning and Corporeality .......................... 315 Bernard G. Prusak contents ix Chapter Fourteen Reason and Feeling in Hans Jonas’s Existential Biology, Arne Naess’s Deep Ecology, and Spinoza’s Ethics ........................................................................ 345 Martin D. Yaffe Chapter Fifteen Caretaker or Citizen: Hans Jonas, Aldo Leopold, and the Development of Jewish Environmental Ethics ....................................................................................... 373 Lawrence Troster Chapter Sixteen Jonas, Whitehead, and the Problem of Power ....................................................................................... 397 Sandra B. Lubarsky Chapter Seventeen “God’s Adventure with the World” and “Sanctity of Life”: Theological Speculations and Ethical Refl ections in Jonas’s Philosophy after Auschwitz ................. 419 Christian Wiese Chapter Eighteen Infants, Paternalism, and Bioethics: Japan’s Grasp of Jonas’s Insistence on Intergenerational Responsibility .......................................................................... 461 William R. LaFleur PART THREE RESPONSES AND REFLECTIONS Chapter Nineteen Refl ections on the Place of Gnosticism and Ethics in the Thought of Hans Jonas ............................. 483 Kalman P. Bland Chapter Twenty On Making Persons: Philosophy of Nature and Ethics ............................................................................... 493 Frederick Ferré Chapter Twenty-One Philosophical Biology and Environmentalism ................................................................... 503 Carl Mitcham x contents Chapter Twenty-Two More on Jonas and Process Philosophy ............................................................................... 511 Robert Cummings Neville Hans Jonas: Life and Works ...................................................... 519 Christian Wiese Bibliography ................................................................................ 523 Index of Names .......................................................................... 555 Index of Subjects ........................................................................ 563 CONTRIBUTORS Kalman P. Bland (Ph.D., 1972, Brandeis University) is professor of reli- gion at Duke University. His major fi elds of research and teaching are medieval and modern Jewish intellectual history. He is the editor and translator of The Epistle on the Possibility of Conjunction with the Active Intel- lect by Ibn Rushd with the Commentary by Moses Narboni: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation (1982), and the author of The Artless Jew: Medieval and Modern Affi rmations and Denials of the Visual (2002), as well as of numerous articles and reviews on Jewish intellectual history. Micha Brumlik (Ph.D., 1977, University of Frankfurt am Main) is pro- fessor of philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. He specializes in German-Jewish history and from 2000 to 2005 was the director of the Fritz Bauer Institute for the Study and Documentation of the History of the Holocaust. He is the author of Die Gnostiker (1992); Schrift, Wort, und Ikone: Wege aus dem Verbot der Bilder (1994); Kein Weg als Deutscher und Jude: Eine bundesrepublikanische Erfah- rung (1996); Vernunft und Offenbarung: Religionsphilosophische Versuche (2000); Deutscher Geist und Judenhass: Das Verhältnis des philosophischen Idealismus zum Judentum (2000); Bildung und Glück: Versuch einer Theorie der Tugenden (2002); Aus Katastrophen lernen: Grundlagen zeitgeschichtlicher Bildung in menschenrecht- licher Absicht (2004); and Sigmund Freud: Der Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts (2006). Strachan Donnelley (Ph.D., 1977, New School for Social Research) is the president of the Center for Humans and Nature, which he founded in 2003. Previously, he was president of The Hastings Center (a bioeth- ics institute) and director of its Humans and Nature Program. Besides numerous published articles in philosophy and applied ethics, Don- nelley has co-edited and written for three special supplements to the Hastings Center Report: “Animals, Science and Ethics” (1990), “The Brave New World of Animal Biotechnology” (1994), and “Nature, Polis, Eth- ics: Chicago Regional Planning” (November–December 1999). He also edited a special edition of the Hastings Center Report in 1995 on Hans Jonas. Recently he has written several articles on philosophy, evolutionary biology, and ethical responsibility. xii contributors Frederick Ferré (Ph.D., 1959, University of St. Andrews, Scotland) is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Georgia and Dickinson College. He is the author and editor of twenty-one books, including Language, Logic, and God (1961); Basic Modern Philosophy of Reli- gion (1967); Shaping the Future: Resources for the Post-Modern World (1976); Philosophy of Technology (1988); Hellfi re and Lightning Rods: Liberating Science, Technology, and Religion (1993); Knowing and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Epistemology (1998); and Living and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Ethic (2001). Vittorio Hösle (Ph.D., 1982, University of Tübingen) is Paul Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters in the Department of German and Rus- sian Languages and Literatures and professor of philosophy and of political science at Notre Dame University. His scholarly interests are in the areas of systematic philosophy and history of philosophy.
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