The Political and Intellectual Influence of Hans Jonas

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The sudden success of Hans Jonas's The Imperative of Responsibility (in German original Das Prinzip Verantwortung, published in 1984) came as a surprise to author himself and to German intellectual and philosophical community at large. Within a decade this book, in which Jonas developed a theory of ethics for technological age, had to be reprinted nine times. The author's name and book's title found their way into countless speeches and addresses given at forums as diverse as ecological groups in remote villages to Bundestag, federal parliament in Bonn. This infusion of philosophical thought into public discourse itself was surprising, because a tradition of exchange between philosophical thought and public affairs had practically ceased to exist. Not since time of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose 1807 and 1808 Reden an die deutsche Nation (Speeches to German Nation) helped to promote national feeling against Napoleonic oppression, and Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, whose Nuremberg School Lectures of 1812 to 1816 informed structuring of German educational system, had work of philosophers so influenced public life. In our own times, as an exception to rule, Carl-Friedrich von Weizsacker, elder brother of former Bundesprasident Richard von Weizsacker, served for some years in late seventies as adviser to social-liberal government of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He had by then come close to acquiring reputation of being a praeceptor Germaniae, a person whose name was never mentioned without decorating description the physicist and philosopher. As a physicist he had explained operation of nuclear fusion reaction cycle as source of energy production in sun; as a philosopher he had published and lectured at Hamburg University on philosophy of nature. Weizsacker later became director of Max Planck Institute for Research into Future Developments and World Problems and had some influence with moderate statements on debate over nuclear energy. But even he never attained degree of attention received by Hans Jonas during 1980s. Timing, Approach, and Style The reasons for Jonas's truly spectacular popularity were not always philosophical in kind. He appeared on German scene at right moment and with right approach. At end of seventies there was a vague but widespread feeling that cultural revolution that had started in 1968 had ended in disappointment. The principle of hope expounded by neomarxist philosopher Ernst Bloch had itself proved to be only a temporarily inspiring utopia, one which faded away under realization that the new man was still not at hand and was unlikely ever to emerge. In contrast, Jonas described real dangers rather than engendering unfounded hopes. Although these dangers had already been foreseen by a number of prophets of ecological movement, Jonas developed theory and defined problem with precision: an explosion of technology driven by human intellect and boundless economic enterprise in a limited world. He was able to explain by philosophical deduction why present generation ought to preserve conditions of life for generations to come. Although need to think of future generations had become a piety of public rhetoric by that time, no cogent answer had been formulated in response to question of why present generations should be responsible for unborn, who have neither been historically represented nor been subjects with personal rights in civil legislation. Did former generations--for instance, by voting for Hitler--care for present one? Jonas avoided a short-term mentality of that kind and provided a well-founded answer with his concept of an ethics for preservation of being (das Seiende) based on nothing other than because it is. Polemicizing against Bloch's principle of hope, he proclaimed his imperative of responsibility. …