1 See “Responsibility in an Era of Modern Technology and Nihilism, Part 2. Inter-connection and Implications of the Two Notions of Responsibility in Jonas,” (forthcoming in Dialogue).

2 The following abbreviations are used to refer to the works of Jonas in this and the follow-up essay: PL: The Phenomenon of Life. Toward a Philosophical Biology (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1966); PE: Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974); PV: Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, [1979]1984); TME: Technik, Medizin und Ethik. Zur Praxis des Prinzips Verantwortung (Frankfurt-am-Main: Suhrkamp, [1985]1987); WpE: Wissenschaft als persönliches Erlebnis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1987) and PUV: Philosophische Untersuchungen und metaphysische Vermutungen (Frankfurt-am-Main/Leibzig: 1992). For the purposes of this study, the books are referred to in the language – English or German – in which they first appeared. For Das Prinzip Verantwortung, I used the translation entitled The Imperative of Responsibility. In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1984 – abbreviated as IR) – the page numbers indicated refer first to the page in the German text and then to the page in the English translation; for references without quotations, the page numbers refer to the German text, where that is the original and first publication.

3 For such a comparison see especially Eric Jakob, Martin Heidegger und Hans Jonas. Die Metaphysik der Subjektivität und die Krise der technologischen Zivilisation. (Tübingen/Basel: Francke, 1996), but also Lawrence Vogel, “Hans Jonas’s Diagnosis of Nihilism: The Case of Heidegger,” in International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 3, no. 1 (1995): 55-72. It should also be borne in mind that Jonas later expressed some reservations about the impression that his article could have created, namely that Gnosticism would be a trans-historical phenomenon (cf. “Religionsphilosophischer Diskurs mit Hans Jonas,” in Ethik für die Zukunft. Im Diskurs mit Hans Jonas. Ed. D. Böhler & I. Hoppe (München: C. H. Beck, 1994), 163-94, here 168-70).

4 The title is somewhat misleading: what Jonas attempts (except perhaps in the last part of the essay) is not to present a Jewish perspective on a contemporary problem, but to give a perspective from the point of view of contemporary philosophy on the crisis facing ethical reflection and to which he suggests some Jewish responses. One is therefore not required to accept any aspect of the Jewish faith in order to be able to appreciate the perspective on nihilism that Jonas presents here.

5 This point is developed in more detail in PL Intro, ch. 1 and ch. 9, as well as in PUV ch. 5.

6 This point, amongst others, is elaborated on in PL Ch. 2, amongst other places.

7 This point is elaborated on in PE Ch. 1, TME Ch. 2, and in PV, amongst other places.

8 When Walther Zimmerli enumerates the meanings that the “abandonment of the world by God” (according to Jonas) has for the “modern philosophizing person,” he also mixes the two notions. The three meanings are: (1) the existential auto-reference of human beings, (2) the ignominy of Auschwitz, and (3) the renunciation of the role of “replacement religion” played by science and technology. See Walther Zimmerli, “Philosophie in einer Gott-verlassenen Welt” in Ethik für die Zukunft. op. cit. 151-62, here, 156.

9 As he so brilliantly explains: “[W]hat I am speaking of is not the insinuation of extraneous ideas into philosophy through the all-too-human psychology of the philosopher. I am speaking of the legitimate continuation, in the medium of philosophy, of existential insights and emphases whose original locus was the world of faith, but whose validity and vitality extend beyond the reaches of faith” (PE 24).

10 It is in the form of this edition that I shall read the two last texts of PUV – I do this knowing very well that they have appeared elsewhere earlier. This choice is justified by the fact that Jonas compiled PUV and that as such it presents, not the real and only interpretation of these texts, but an important last interpretation of them.

11 “Religionsphilosophischer Diskurs mit Hans Jonas,” op. cit. 177.

12 And similarly PUV 131-2: “Damit ist gesagt, daß vom Sein der Dinge selbst – nicht erst vom Willen eines persönlichen Schöpfergottes ihretwegen – ein Gebot ergehen und mich meinen kann.”

13 However, it has to be noted that, earlier in the same book, concerning moral obligation, Jonas conceded “[es] ist theoretisch garnicht leicht und vielleicht ohne Religion überhaupt nicht zu begründen” (PV 36; Jonas added this phrase and the paragraph from which it is cited to the text of PV – it was not in the original essay reprinted in Hans Jonas, “Technology and Responsibility. Reflections on the New Task of Ethics,” in PE 3-20, 13. See also PV 57-8 [formulated more neutrally]: “Es ist die Frage ob wir ohne die Wiederherstellung der Kategorie des Heiligen, die am gründlichsten durch die wissenschaftliche Aufklärung Zerstört wurde, eine Ethik haben können. … Aber eine Religion, die nicht da ist, kann der Ethik ihre Aufgabe nicht abnehmen.” Hirsch Hadorn cites passages from before and after PV in which Jonas does indeed maintain that a creator God is needed to justify obligation. Instead of following her in maintaining a contradiction between the two opposing points of view, I make room for both, but as different voices; in other words, different kinds of discourse that each, within a particular textual context, claims to obey to honour different rules of validity (cf. Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn, “Verantwortungsbegriff und kategorischer Imperativ der Zukunftsethik von Hans Jonas,” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 54, no. 2, (2000) 218-237).

14 “Lorsque Jonas dit que sa phénoménologie de la vie est ‘existentialiste,’ c’est parce qu’il voit s’anticiper dans la phusis et dans le moindre organisme qui en émane le souci de soi, dans le sillage de l’enseignement aristotélisant de Heidegger à Marbourg: tandis que, lorsqu’il accuse Heidegger de gnosticisme et de nihilisme, c’est justement pour avoir dans Sein und Zeit, en conformité avec l’héritage de Descartes, réduit la nature à une pure et simple Vorhandenheit, et fait de celle-ci l’antithèse absolue du mode d’être propre du Dasein, l’existence soucieuse à dessein de soi, conçue en définitive en termes nietzschéens comme pure volonté de volonté, à mille lieues des vues éthiques des Anciens.” See Jacques Taminiaux, “Les enjeux d’une lecture gnostique de Sein und Zeit,” in Sillages phénoménologiques. Auditeurs et lecteurs de Heidegger (Bruxelles/Paris: Ousia, 2002), 133-52, citation p.151.

15 See PL 86: “But future is the dominant time-horizon opening before the thrust of life, if concern is its primary principle of inwardness.” Cf. also Jakob, Martin Heidegger und Hans Jonas, op. cit. 315.

16 “Eine Serie von praktischen Vorschriften,” Jonas in “Vom Profit zur Ethik und zurück. Technik-Verantwortung im Unternehmen” (interview), in Ethik für die Zukunft. op. cit. 224-43, citation p. 241.

17 Hans Achterhuis, “Hans Jonas: ethiek en techniek,” in De maat van de techniek. Ed. H. Achterhuis (Baarn: Ambo, 1992), 139-76, here 164-65.

18 For all his refusal of Jonas’s metaphysics, Achterhuis’s response to this question is negative. He suggests, without elaborating on his idea, that it would be possible to do a different reading of Jonas’s attempt at founding ethics. His philosophy “then ceases to be a modernistic ‘master narrative,’ but becomes rather a post-modern attempt to convince and motivate the reader with all possible rhetoric[al] means, both rational arguments and images that make an appeal to the emotions. In Jonas’s own words it becomes a call, an appeal that could lead to a change of mentality and attitude and to a different educational practice” (Achterhuis, “Hans Jonas: ethiek en techniek,” op. cit. 165, my translation). The reading that I develop below is compatible with Achterhuis’s opinion.

19 This failure should be deduced not only from Jonas, as cited above, but also from a number of commentaries; see, for instance, Hirsch Hadorn, “Verantwortungsbegriff und kategorischer Imperativ der Zukunftsethik von Hans Jonas,” op. cit. and Gethmann-Siefert, “Ethos und metaphysisches Erbe. Zu den Grundlagen von Hans Jonas” Ethik der Verantwortung,” in Philosophie der Gegenwart, Gegenwart der Philosophie, ed. H. Schnädelbach and G. Keil (Hamburg: Junius, 1993), 171-215. A valuable bibliography of literature on this subject is provided by Micha Werner in “Dimensionen der Verantwortung: Ein Werkstattbericht zur Zukunftsethik von Hans Jonas” in Ethik für die Zukunft, op. cit. 303-38, here 317n71.

20 The myth is found in PL 275ff, PUV 193ff and in a less narrative form underlies the last essay of PUV. The latter essay is included in this group, since it is here that one sees most clearly how the myth could be read as a narrative equivalent of Jonas’s teleological metaphysics in PL, PV, and PUV.

21 It is not clear what pronoun should be used in English for this God. I opt for a personal pronoun since the myth seems to indicate that, at least at the end, God has a personal being; the feminine personal pronoun would do just as well as the masculine.

22 That the mere emergence of feelings of obligation towards others does not suffice as a justification of ethics can be concluded (1) from Jonas’s explicit criticism and rejection of subjectivism as a kind of manifestation of nihilism in ethics (PL 284, PE 171, but discussed above), and (2) from Jonas’s insistence that a theory of responsibility as he conceives of it values the subjective sense of responsibility, only within a broader framework, namely as a personal appropriation of the objective validity of obligation (cf. PV 164) – in fact, in this passage, one clearly hears the same logic at work as in the citation under discussion: “Not the validity, to be sure, only the efficacy of the moral command depends on the subjective condition …” (PV 164/ IR 86). In other words, in Jonas’s commentary on his first presentation of his myth, he presents the myth as the source of validity for the subjective experience of the call of conscience.

23 Albrecht Wellmer, “Der Mythos vom leidenden und werdenden Gott. Fragen an Hans Jonas,” in Endspiele. Die unversöhnliche Moderne (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 250-6, here 250.

24 The first is implicit in the essay on God after Auschwitz; the other is the very special case in PV – cf PV 240, § title: “Archetypische Evidenz des Säuglings für das Wesen der Verantwortung”. It is the very particular nature of the parent-child relation – one which seems to side step the long metaphysical argument of PV – that allows me to consider it in the present context. Similarly, one could speak of Auschwitz as the same kind of “archetypical evidence” in PV. The latter presents a negative obviousness; the former a positive obviousness. But each is a manifestation of the fragility of the other.

25 “The answer to Auschwitz could quite perfectly be this: there is no God, in no meaningful way can there be a God that allows this” (cited above).

26 A detailed discussion of the two theories of responsibility in Jonas is the subject of my second article: “Responsibility in an Era of Modern Technology and Nihilism, Part 2. Inter-connection and Implications of the Two Notions of Responsibility in Jonas,” (forthcoming in Dialogue), in particular §§4 and 5.

27 In the current study, as far as the notion of myth is concerned, I limit myself to the texts in which the myth is told and those in which related ideas are expressed in a similar spirit as in the myth. A broader study would have to take into consideration the idea-historical development of Jonas’s use of the notion of myth from his very earliest work on.

28 Cf. Wellmer, “Der Mythos vom leidenden und werdenden Gott.” op. cit. 251.

29 Cf. PUV 191: “Wie Kant der praktischen Vernunft zugestand, was er der theoretischen versagte, so dürfen wir die Wucht einmaliger und ungeheuerlicher Erfahrung mitsprechen lassen in der Frage, was es mit Gott auf sich habe. Und da erhebt sich sogleich die Frage: Was hat Auschwitz dem hinzugefügt, was man schon immer wissen konte vom Ausmaß des Schrecklichen und Entsetzlichen, was Menschen anderen Menschen antun können und seit je getan haben?” Compare with Jean Lacroix, Kant et le Kantisme (Paris: PUF, 1966), 17-8; 12: “Si les Idées de la raison pure ne constituent pas proprement un savoir, du moins sont-elles régulatrices de notre pensée autant que de notre action. Elles guident notre marche infinie. Aussi ne sont-elles jamais données comme des objets: elles imposent des tâches. … la raison et normative. Son caractère essentiel n’est pas la connaissance du fait, mais l’imposition du droit.”

30 This is true even though the subtitle of the Auschwitz essay is “Eine jüdische Stimme” and even though Jonas himself indicates some Jewish sources of the myth. Although Jonas attempts to tie in his private myth “mit der verantwortlichen Überlieferung jüdisch-religiösen Denkens” (PUV 197), he notes in a number of places that his myth clearly contradicts this criterion. For an excellent discussion of the notion of God in Jonas, see R. Theis, “Dieu éclaté. Hans Jonas et les dimensions d’une théologie philosophique après Auschwitz,” in Revue philosophique de Louvain 98, no. 2 (1998): 341-57.

31 The extent to which these concessions signify a departure from inherited theological ideas and thus a challenge to (at least Jewish or Christian) theology could be measured, and its contours traced, in the critical appropriation by Jüngel (a far from philosophically insensitive theologian) of Jonas’s essay – in which Jüngel attempts to bring back something of the notion of divine omnipotence. See Eberhard Jüngel, “Gottes ursprüngliches Anfangen als schöpferische Selbstbegrenzung: Ein Beitrag zum Gespräch mit Hans Jonas über den Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz,” in Gottes Zukunft-Zukunft der Welt, ed. H. Deuser et al. (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1986), 265-75. I would like to thank Georg Essen for this reference.

32 See also R. Theis, “Dieu éclaté.” op. cit. 244ff.

33 With some changes that need analysis elsewhere, for instance, the change of the dominant “God” to the use of “Geist” or “Urgeist”. The Leitmotiv of the “extreme Selbstentäußerung des Schöpfergeistes im Anfang der Dinge” (PUV 242) or “Machtverzicht Gottes” (PUV 245) is, however, undeniable. We should, in my view, qualify this essay as an intermediary attempt at an “Übersetzung vom Bildlichen ins Begriffliche” (PUV 197); in other words, of facilitating the symbolic appropriation of the myth (see §6 below).

34 Wellmer (“Der Mythos vom leidenden und werdenden Gott,” op. cit. 252) analyses and summarises this “aesthetic” interpretation of the performative character of the myth with admirable precision: : “Wenn der Mythos sagt, was ‘in direkten Begriffen unsagbar’ ist, so heißt das zunächst: er ist ein Bild, ein Bild nicht des Menschen, sondern der Menschen-in-der-Welt. In solchen Bildern blitzt eine Wahrheit auf, aber wenn wir begrifflich zu sagen versuchen, was in ihnen aufblitzt, geraten wir notwendigerweise in Aporien und Widersprüche (das ist es ja, was gemeint ist, wenn wir sagen, daß das, was das Bild sagt, ‘begrifflich’ unsagbar ist.) Daß das Bild anthropomorph ist, heißt hier ja nicht, daß es wie eine Metapher gebaut ist (die vielleicht Erkenntnis vermitteln kann), sondern daß es mit Worten operieren muß, die dem, was das Bild zum Ausdruck bringen soll, eo ipso unangemessen sind: Zwischen Gemeintem und Gesagtem besteht eine unüberbrückbare Kluft – nichts anderes meint das Wort ‘unsagbar.’ Wir kennen freilich ein Paradigma, wo diese Kluft sich schließt, weil sie gleichsam ins Innere des Bildes verlegt wird und der Anspruch, mit dem Bild etwas sagen zu wollen, verschwindet: dies Paradigma ist das ästhetische Bild.”

35 Cf. Jean Greisch, “L’amour du monde et le principe responsabilité,” in La responsabilité. La condition de notre humanité. (Paris: Editions Autrement, 1994), 72-89, here 80.

36 In accordance with the spirit of Kant’s philosophy, Jonas writes: “Denn wer das Scheitern in Sachen des Wissens in Kauf nimmt, ja, von vornherein auf dies Ziel überhaupt verzichtet, der darf in Sachen von Sinn und Bedeutung sehr wohl über solche Dinge nachdenken” (PUV 191).

37 The myth is a narrative that could give an account of the universal human history, including the opposite forms of monism and the dualism that mediated them; at the same time it provides at least an aesthetic provocation of the possibility of the overcoming of the latter (nihilistic) monism.

38 The last essay of PUV (“Materie, Geist und Schöpfung”) would then take a middle position between the myth and the metaphysics of PV. For the notion of saying the unsayable, see again Wellmer, “Der Mythos vom leidenden und werdenden Gott,” op. cit. 252, cited above.