Anthropology versus Ontology Plessner and Jonas’s Readings of Heidegger’s Philosophy* « Vivre » (leben) est une opération primordiale à partir de laquelle il devient possible de « vivre » (erleben) tel ou tel monde. (Merleau-Ponty) Leben birgt als eine seiner Möglichkeiten Existenz. (Plessner) To begin with I will attempt to shed some light on the several points of convergence between Plessner and Jonas (I). In reference to these affinities it is all the more surprising that Jonas never quotes nor directly mentions Plessner in his writings. In the second section of my paper (II) I will then claim that Jonas’ silence is to be linked to the divergent approaches shaping their respective philosophical projects. I will then test back my claim in section (III) in reference to Plessner and Jonas’ dissim- ilar approaches to Heidegger’s ontology and particularly to his concept of “existentials”. Finally, in the fourth section (IV) I will try to outline what could have been Jonas’ answer to Plessner’s most cherished ques- tion : What is the ground of existence (Was fundiert Existenz) ? I. PLESSNER’S AND JONAS’ HERMENEUTiCS OF LiFE Indisputably, Helmuth Plessner and Hans Jonas’ philosophical pro- posals display several affinities. This is so in particular when it comes to their common interest for the philosophy of the organic, as testified by their two major works, Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human (Plessner H., 2019 [1928])1 and Jonas’ The Phenomenon of Life * I am very grateful to Roberto Franzini Tibaldeo for his helpful comments and for letting me read a private letter written to him by Lore Jonas and dated August 3rd, 2005. 1 Quotations from this work, unless otherwise indicated, rely on the recent English translation by Millay Hyatt. The pages indicated after the quotations are those of the original German edition, also referenced in the English translation. Revue Philosophique de Louvain 117(2), 311-339. doi: 10.2143/RPL.117.2.3287389 © 2019 Revue Philosophique de Louvain. Tous droits réservés. 312 Francesca Michelini (Jonas H., 1966). Both texts surely belong to the great classics of the 20th century on the topic. Despite reciprocal differences in terms of style and structure — Plessner’s book is systematically structured, while The Phenomenon of Life is an argument-based collection of essays — the two texts are in agreement regarding their main intent. By looking back under many respects at the German tradition of philosophy of nature, and by retrieving to some extent Aristotelian notions, they both embrace the inquiry on living beings as preliminary to and indispensable for any investigation in anthropology and ultimately also — especially according to Jonas — in ethics. As Helmuth Plessner puts it : « We must begin by clarifying what can be described as being alive before further steps are taken to develop a theory of the experience of life in its highest human layer » (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 37). Based on similar premises, according to Jonas, even ethics is ultimately part of the philosophy of nature or, better to say, it is based upon an ontology of life : « Only an ethics which is grounded in the breadth of being, not merely in the singularity or oddness of man, can have significance in the scheme of things » (Jonas H., 1966, p. 284). The approach, method, and aim of the philosophy of the living are, for Plessner as for Jonas, irreducible to the parameters of natural sciences ; accordingly, they both firmly believe that the task of a “phil- osophical biology” or “biophilosophy” should not stop at the mere elu- cidation of sciences’ findings. Their main shared assumption is that it is possible to achieve a form of knowledge of nature even regardless of the exactitude of the scientific method ; and that only by assuming this latter as the only applicable method to the knowledge of nature, one reaches the reductionist conclusion that what surrounds us is but what can be scientifically verified (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 86). Differ- ently, according to Plessner « there is much more to the world than what can be observed » (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 119 ; transl. slightly modified). That life cannot be grasped merely in terms of measurements, verifications, and analyses is clearly expressed also by Jonas’ well- known image of a « mathematician God ». A divine mathematician, that is to say a bodiless observer, would not be able to grasp « the point of life », its « ontological status » (Jonas H., 1966, p. 69), since « life can be known only by life » (Jonas H., 1966, p. 91). This famous statement by Jonas suitably outlines the theoretical background of both philosophers’ investigation of the organic. Both authors envisage, in fact, what may be defined as “biohermeneutics”, Anthropology versus Ontology 313 that is to say, in short, the conceptual articulation of that kind of “evi- dence” on biological phenomena that cannot be corroborated nor falsi- fied by empirical knowledge, since even natural sciences assume it as an interpretative framework, as, that is, the object of intuition, “under- standing”, but not of “explanation” or demonstration in scientific terms. « All content that can only be acquired by intuition — Plessner writes — is fated to enter into experience without becoming determinable as experience progresses » (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 119)2. On this point, Plessner also says that : « The organic is not dissolved by being explained. Exact biology, as the physics of the organic, shows, if any- thing, only the system of conditions and occasions for the occurrence of organic modals irreducible in their quality » (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 109-110). Dissatisfaction concerning the reductionist approaches to the living and, more generally, to the whole of nature should be furthermore taken, for both authors, as part of a wider criticism of dualisms in general, in particular Descartes’ approach. Plessner and Jonas, however, do not aim to dismiss all differences by resorting to the monism of indifference, nor they embrace a metaphysical unity neutralising the difference between “spirit” and “matter”. On the contrary, they both maintain the practical advantages of the distinction between physical and mental without entirely questioning its ability to grasp essential features of reality. According to Plessner, organic nature — inasmuch as it is different from the inorganic — is what entails “double-aspectivity”, “polar unity” ; similarly, accord- ing to Jonas, life itself is a « fact of polarity » or « essentially relation- ship » (Jonas H., 1966, p. 4). Both Plessner and Jonas keep away from any form of panpsychism, hylozoism, and animism, in other words from any position crediting vitality also to the inorganic nature. The underlying claim they both share is instead that the characteristics of interiority, far from being exclusive of human beings, should be extended to the whole of the living, but not to the non-living. According to Plessner there is a « transition from extended being to interior being, from the world of being to the world of having, not only in the case of the human to the extent that he takes himself on philosophically and turns inward, but everywhere that he 2 Plessner’s references to intuition are clearly indebted to Dilthey’s contributions and to his distinction between “verstehen” and “erklären”, to which also Jonas points us ; see, for instance Jonas H., 2002, p. 28. 314 Francesca Michelini encounters life » (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 159). Similarly, while laying out his programme at the beginning of The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas states that « the organic even in its lowest forms prefigures mind, and that mind even on its highest reaches remains part of the organic » (Jonas H., 1966, p. 1). Interiority and subjectivity are part of the original display of life and are not simply equated to the sphere of consciousness and self-­ consciousness : « A self is not yet a subject of consciousness », Plessner writes in the Levels (Plessner H., 2019 [1928], p. 159). In their accounts, the two philosophers start off instead from the living corporeality ­(Leiblichkeit) of human beings. According to Jonas, since we are subjects experiencing life and simultaneously also living bodies, we are in terms of perspective at the core of the phenomenon of life. This latter is not simply placed in front of us as a « neutral » object, as if it was observed from « outside » life itself. It is experienced from « within » through the exemplarity of our psychophysical totality (Jonas H., 1966, p. 23). In this sense one should read also Jonas’ previously quoted statement : « Life can be known only by life ». According to Jonas and Plessner, life can never be understood on an exclusively physical or psychological basis. It is neither a mysterious matter-pervading force nor something added to bodily reality. It is not a hidden, secret or deeply concealed quality. Both philosophers’ reference to life is instead always a reference to the actor of life itself, in its most tangible form, that is to say, it is a reference to the organism. Besides the general remarks provided so far, even closer affinities between the two authors can be detected when it comes to the organism and its fundamen- tal features. Their similarities are possibly even more striking in this respect. I will here briefly outline some of them concerning eight main topics3. I. The boundary between inside and outside. Their common start- ing point is the quest for a distinctive feature of the living which could “withstand” the simple alternative inside vs outside, without removing or neutralising their difference and making it, on the contrary, into some- thing essentially pertaining to the living. In this respect, in the accounts of both philosophers, the boundary between inner and outer turns out to 3 For a more articulated account, see Michelini F.