Hans Jonas's Ethic of Responsibility: From Ontology to Ecology

2 A Philosophy of the Organism

2 A Philosophy of the Organism My thesis was that the essence of reality reveals itself most completely in the organic components of the organism—not in the atom, not in the molecule, not in the crystal, also not in the planets, suns, and so forth, but in the living organism, which indubitably is a body, but harbors something more than the silent being of matter. Only from this starting point is it possible to develop a theory of being. —Hans Jonas, Memoirs 1. Introduction In his seminal text, The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas develops a philosophy of biology using a phenomenological approach. The “testimony of life” provides the basis for his observations, and his researches lead him to two important conclusions: humans are not separate from and other than nature, and nature is not devoid of intrinsic value. These findings are crucial to his later development of an ethic of responsibility, which is based largely on his ontological analysis of both the human being and nature. They provide the foundation for Jonas’s assertion that there is a good present in being, a good whose presence calls human beings to responsibility, and it does so in large part because the human good is such that it is implicit in response to the presence of the good in being. That nature and the human are ethically intertwined in this way becomes evident when the biological and ecological reality of the nature–human symbiosis is taken into account. The philosophical import of Jonas’s work derives in part from an essential conceptual reorientation toward life, nature, and ethics, a reorientation effected by an exploration of biology as the ground for a new philosophical understanding of the human being, and a new understanding of life itself. To understand Jonas’s ethic of responsibility, one must begin with his philosophy of biology. 47 48 Hans Jonas’s Philosophy of Responsibility Jonas initiates some key investigations in this work, among them investigations into the relation between mind or psyche and matter, the philosophical implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution, the possible subjectivity or agency of organisms, and an examination of the role of teleology in organisms. Each is addressed in this chapter insofar as it contributes to Jonas’s development of an ethic of responsibility. 2. Mind and Matter Jonas argues that organisms present an instance of the unification of matter and mind and he retrieves from Aristotle the important insight that physis, the coming forth of living beings, appears as both form and mind, or psyche. Contemporary science has returned to this understanding of matter as it continues to discover the intelligence that is at work within each cell, each genome, each organism. To heal the split between matter and mind, subject and object, and human and nature is not to diffuse the differences and reduce what is other to sameness. Instead, it is to imagine the dialectic between these seeming opposites and to examine the evidence that points to the essential harmony that is their synthesis. Life is a process of mediation between dualisms. It is at the point of mediation that our interest should focus. To see matter as essentially inspirited, nature as illuminated from within by purposiveness and value, and the human as part of a continuum of subjectivities (rather than the sole subject in a world of objects) is to find our way toward a nature–human relationship that is more grounded in lived experience. Jonas’s phenomenological understanding of the organism, particularly his consideration of purposiveness and agency, which he sees as indicative of the presence of psyche, in some form, in all living beings, directly challenges the Cartesian view of dualism and the separation of mind and matter. And if scientific materialism tends to reduce nature to mechanical matter and thereby siphons the value and meaning of life from nature, Darwin’s theory provides for a return toward meaning through a different understanding of nature, one that knows nature as a dynamic process, as living and changing through its own activity. A reconstitution of nature as innately valuable offers a way for the human to situate herself within a meaningful world. No longer threatened by nihilism, the human finds a place within nature that provides meaning and direction, restoring wholeness and harmony. While this new understanding of the relation of mind and matter supports recovery from the human and nature dichotomy, it also nurtures the possibility for human care of the environment, and the awakening of...