Wissenschaft as Personal Experience Author(s): Hans Jonas Source: The Hastings Center Report, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Jul.

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as Wissenschaft
Personal Experience
By HANS JONAS

Hans Jonas was one of the major early influences on bioethics. In this recently translated personal retrospective he sets forth his vision of a scientificallyinformed but technologically cautious bioethics.

7 hreelectures are unitedhere:commonto all of themis thepersonalelement, and whichcompletely dominates the lecture thatgivesthe colwhicheachoriginally reasons containedfor different "This as Personal the lectionits title, 'Wissenschaft in Experience. topic,requested by University of Heidelberg to its six-hundredth led me topresent an autobiographical ac1986 as my contribution celebration, anniversary havedone. Ten earlier the held the count,whichI wouldnot otherwise ceremony years by University ofMarburg to commemorate teacher to include my deceased andfriend RudolfBultmannhadgiven me the opportunity perwith a tributeof a more nature. And when sonalreminiscences of my own accord,together formal and theoretical I wasawardedthe German Booksellers' PeacePrizefor 1987, that enabledme to delivera lecture whose subject mattermaderoom a declaration conviction. That declaration is to a be one, for likely final ofpersonal given my advanced that I welcomed to combine age, and it is in no smallpartfor this reason Suhrkamp Verlags suggestion thesethreelectures in one volume.-Hans Jonas

have been invited to speak to you about Wissenschaft as personal experience.' This is a subject I would scarcelyhave chosen myself, and I even hesitated to acceptan invitationthat involvedspeakingabout my own personalexperience.For the end resultof intellectualendeavoris actuallyall that should be made public, not the inner processleadingto it; what can be of more than private interestabout the latter?I think that what is expected of me in surveyingmy past is to glean from my own featuresthat lie experiencessomething like paradigmatic the and thus reveal something beyond personal sphere about contemporarythought in general.Approachedfor this purpose in the evening of a long life devoted to the study of philosophy,I shouldn'tdisappointthis expectaI
Hans Jonas,"Wissenschafi as Personal Center Experience," Hastings Report 32, no. 4 (2002): 27-35.
July-August 2002

tion-taking into account the danger that what Nietzsche called "cursedipsissimosity" might play its tricks I one. therefore upon As Hans Jonas points out in this accepted this disquiet- essay, the German word "Wising task. My hesitation senschaft"covers a wider range of is heightened by the meaning than the English word fact that Max Weber, "science," usuallygiven as its equivwho in 1919 gavea cel- alent. It can, for example, denote as well as an intellectual ebratedaddressentitled scholarship discipline or a field of knowledge. "Wissenschaft als Beruf In these pages it is translated acas a Vo- cording to its meaning in a given ("Scholarship cation"), is looking context; thus the tide would read over my shoulder,so to "Philosophy as Personal Experience" had we not decided to leave speak. The echo of his the word in German. Trans. title was probably intentional on the part of my hosts, but I hope it does not leaveme open to comparisonwith Weber's incomparable
HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 27

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example.In contrastto the more objective natureof the word "vocation" in Weber'saddress, the referenceto "personal experience" in my title forces me to enter the subjective,autobiographical sphere with all its unique and accidental qualities. I shall attempt here to use personal memoriesas guidepostsleadingto reflectionsof a more generalnature. Unlike the narrower Anglo-American sense of the word "science," the German "Wissenschafi" in my title also embracesthe humanitiesand the social sciences;and it must primarily be these, including philosophy, that my assignment encompasses. The "wissenschaftlich" character of these disciplines is different from that of the exact sciences dealing with nature; nowhere else has so much thought been given to this difference as in Germany.In Heidelbergan audience scarcelyneeds to be reminded that at the turn of the century Heinrich Rickert made a distinction between a field of inquirywhose goal is and one whose goal is "explanation" In addition, I must "understanding." mention Wilhelm Dilthey, whose lifework focused on the concept of experience. And then there is the philosophical theory of hermeneutics, which was not developed until my time and whose Nestor, HansGeorg Gadamer, is still among us. These are the names of philosophers, and they point to the quite different character of philosophy as a discipline. Going beyond the specialized individual sciences, philosophy reflects-as the precedingexamplesindicate-upon their differing approachesto knowledgeand theirconception of truth, and in the process philosophy becomes itself a highly This self-mirrordeveloped specialty. of on a new level of ing knowledge truth can in principlebe repeatedat will in the form of ever new reflections on reflections. As concerns "understanding," the of the humanicognitive approach ties, it is clear that "personalexperience," understood as empathy with the object-itself the concrete em28 HASTINGS CENTER REPORT

bodiment of experience-is an indissolublepartof the intellectualprocess from startto finish,pervadingthe enHow else can one tire interpretation. for study history, example-the hisof tory art, literature,religion, politics, of all the past thoughts, feelings, and actions of humankind? We must use our imagination;what has been experiencedmust be re-experienced. For here one subject encountersanother subject, which no matter how alien and far removed in historical time, still remains human and thus approachableby us, albeit open to endless interpretations. But why shouldthis encountertake place,why should the past be re-experienced? Goethe answeredthis question with the followingwords: Those unabletogive themselves an account of thepastthree thousandyears Mustremain in thedark,naive, And livefromdayto day. In all that we are, we are heirs of the past, and in its rediscovery we discover hidden aspects of ourselves. This is inevitablya subjectiveprocess. Here, the personalelement becomes involved and with it our place in time: the historicityof the interpreting subject means that he can never have the lastword, just as he generally did not have the first one. At best he bequeaths to posterity one more aspectto consider,even if only as materialfor argumentand revision,and he does so entirely in keeping with his own frequentlypolemicalmotivation. The divergenceof one'sown interpretation from previous ones is part of the process.We view a phenomenon in a hall of mirrorsof previous interpretations and via the mirrors' manifold reflections. As a result-as the sophisticated scholar well knows-we can coax forth new aspects of a historical phenomenon over and over again if it has been sufficiently documented; again and again it can, indeed must, be discussed anew in a never-endingconversation. Earlierviews are for this reasonnot necessarily false (although

they may be in individualcases),and new views will at best become partof the unfolding truth. Accordingly,a given historical phenomenon lends itself to endless interpretation by virtue of the constantly new confrontationsamong interpreters, who are themselves historically conditioned subjectivities. This will go on as long as history continues to produce new interpreters. The humanities, including their philosophical component, must acknowledge that this subjectivity, which is beneficialeven if occasionalis an esly limiting in its perspective, sential part of their character. They mustn't be afraid to distinguish this character from that of the naturalsciences, which deal only with objective phenomena. Certainlyin these latter disciplines as well, devotion to the matterat hand involvesa personalelement, yet neither in their method nor their conclusions does it play a role; basically, the individual researchersare interchangeable. What is discoveredby one could have been discoveredby another once progress in their research reaches a certain need to point. Nor do the researchers concern themselves with what has been superseded.I won't pursue this comparisonany further;it is intended only to emphasize how much more inextricably connected the personal is to the objectivein the field in which my thinking took place. Here the inquirersarenot interchangeable. Each one is a unique case. For this very reason, it is permissible for a scholar in the humanities, when questioned, to give an account of himself, even though what he says may not alwaysbe reliable.

I
sing the threestagesof my intellectual biographyas the framework for my reply, I will try to answer the question presented to me. Initiallycame my study of the Gnosticism of late antiquityfrom the perspective of existential analysis;then my encounter with the natural sci2002 July-August

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ences on my way to formulating a philosophy of the organism;and finally my turn from theoretical to practical philosophy-that is, to ethics-in response to the urgent challengeof technologythat could no longer be ignored.But firstI must go back even further. As I recall-if I am really to be personal-my first experienceof an intellectual discipline occurred long before I began my formal studies at the university.As a fifteen-year-old Gymnasium student I was reading Felix Dahn's Ein Kampfum Rom (A Struggle for Rome) when a learned and wise uncle urged me to readEdward Gibbons'sHistoryof the Decline and Fall of theRomanEmpire. As a result of experiencingthis monumental earlywork of modern historiography, I became aware for the first time of what it means to reconstructhistory on the basis of cited sources, to deduce its course on a large scale by studying an aggregateof particulars rather than depicting this or that episodewith its heroesand villainsin a novelistic way. And at the same time I realizedthat this reconstrucwas tion, in spite of sober objectivity, a of definite guided by point view; for Gibbons'swork breathesthe spirit of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, as demonstratedby his clear, often ironic style and by his Voltairean view of Christianityas one of the factors responsible for Rome's decline. He could write mockingly of Augustine (I still rememberthe passage) that he cast himself boldly into the sea of grace. Here was a bracing air far from all romanticizing.Later, when I decided to do researchmyself-something I couldn't have imagined at the time-on a segment of this same late and post-classical period, it was from a consciouslydifferent perspectivebut also one in which the spiritof the Enlightenmentwas a contributingelement. At this sametime, when still in the Gymnasiumand inspiredby my special interestin Judaism,I began reading the Prophets of the Old Testament, as translated (with commen2002 July-August

tary) by members of that Protestant school representative of the scholarof its This school was ship day. known for its historical and textual criticism of the Bible. In Max Weber's addressmentioned earlier, he of modern science's "disenspoke chanting of the world" and its dismissal of the miraculous.In spite of the truth of his observation, it was my experience,when first encountering scholarshipin the realm of religion, that placing the Prophets in their time and world, turning them from the flat homiletic figuresof the

of philosc ophy,to which I was becomincre ing asingly committed, at least did not exclude the simultaneous study of religion or religions. All of this was apreludeto my career. My eincounter with the spirit of scholarly researchbecame a serious matter w'hen I was a universitystudent. Prc )bably like everyone else, I first "exI perienced" the intellectual disciplines through the medium of lers. The personal element my teach n a plays iuch greaterrole in philosothe other humanitiesthan in phy and 1 the exact sciences,where, if I am not

M y first
those Grundlegung Sitten,

philosophical

reading

in

days happened

to be Kant's der

zur Metaphysik I believed the ethos I had of the

where

rediscovered Prophets,

although

this time in the of reason. Kant of contact

form of a principle led me to suspect between philosophy

that there are points and religion.

sacred texts into flesh-and-blood made them more alive for characters, us-closer to, not farther from, the present-and left intact the natural miracle:that they could exist at all. This was my first recognition of the fact that historicalscholarship,for all its distancing,can also be a means of heightened appropriation. And my first philosophical reading in those dayshappenedto be, I don'tknow by what accident, Kant's Grundlegung derSitten(Fundamenzur Metaphysik tal Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals),where I believedI had rediscoveredthe ethos of the Prophets,although this time in the form of a principle of reason. Kant led me to suspect that there are points of contact betweenphilosophyand religion. In terms of my own future, this suspicion suggestedto me that the study

mistaken,the teacher's personalityrecedes behind the subject being studied (which is totallyindependentof it and the same for everyone). At the most, the teacher'spersonalityfunctions as a pedagogic model for the practiceof-and thus training in-a universally valid method. On the other hand, historians, sociologists, philologists, and theologians are, as alreadynoted, in everycase noninterchangeableindividuals.This is all the more true for philosophers, who teach by philosophizing. You didn't simply pursuephilosophyas a fieldyou studied with Husserl,Heidegger, Hartmann,or Jaspers,choosing your university and courses accordingly. You experienced the nature of the field through your professors;it was embodied in them. You became a in a very specialsense, and "disciple"
HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 29

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something resembling a process of emancipationbecame necessarylater on if you didn'twant to remaina disciple for the rest of your life. I had the good fortune to find great teachers-above all Husserl, Heidegger, and Bultmann. Each in his own way made the study of philosophy a personalexperiencefor me. I must limit myself here to the example of Heidegger,who had a decisive influence on me for years. I am sometimes asked what the secret of his effectivenessas a teacheractually was. One may indeed speak of a secret here, for studentscame underhis him. spell even before understanding That at least is what happenedin my case. In my firstsemester,in the summer of 1921 in Freiburg, I found myself in Heidegger's proseminar on Aristotle's De Anima. Our confrontation with the text in that seminarwas no doubt what Goethe calledan Urerlebnis(primal experience).Nothing was made easy for us; Heidegger insistedon the pristinesenseof the simplest words, undistortedby later terminology,the use of which was strictly forbidden.The usualphilosophical jargon was not admissible-"much too scholarly"Heidegger would say when students, on the basis of their reading,introducedit into the discussion. The text was young, not old; present, not past. We were supposed to uncover Aristotle'soriginal questions and pronouncementsfrom beneath the layersimposed by the tradition of more than a thousand years; we were supposed to rediscoverand ponderanew,throughhim, the initial questions posed by philosophy per interest se-not out of an antiquarian but in orderto be able to make a new beginning ourselves. (Why Heideglaterbeger consideredthis necessary came clear from his writings.) It was indeed a seminarfor beginnersin the most surprising sense of the word:we were all supposed to become beginners again, which the widely read modernman certainlyis not, living as he does with his largely second- or thirdhand knowledge. We were not meant to become beginnersex nihilo
30 HASTINGS CENTER REPORT

but ratherreadersalreadyinfluenced by the previousmajor studies of historicalorigins and of alienationfrom these origins.This was the approachI learned from Heidegger. Repeated over the yearsand used with an ever growingnumberof texts, it becamea permanentpartof my life experience. Just as we experiencedthe teacher in his seminar,so too we experienced the thinker in his lectures, more specifically the thinker in actu. He did not deliver preparedlecturesthe way Husserl did; what we heardwas the process of thinking itself as it groped its way in a halting monologue to the hidden matter at hand. At first I did not understand what

choice of the dissertation topic. In my case chance had it that in Marburg I took Rudolf Bultmann'sNew Testament seminar. He gave me an assignment to interpret a passage from the JohannineGospel, and this drew me beyond the specific text itself to investigatethe area of gnosis that opened up behind it. The topic held me captive-for many years,as it turned out. Until that time this topic was the domain of historiansof churchand dogma, or more generally of religiousstudies;however,this subject caught my intereston philosophical grounds.Why?What was it about this wild offshoot of early Christian and late Classicalthought-and such

There questions

awaited

the permanent

and essential the nature of Strange to

of philosophy

concerning

Being and with it the Being say, however, come the question

of nature. of "nature"

had never

up in my course

of studies.

this matterwas, but I sensed it must be the authentic core that is the goal of all philosophy.Somethingwas taking place beforeus; somethingwas at work. "Thinking is happening in him," one was tempted to say.There was a deeply moving element to this, which explainsthe covert fame Heidegger enjoyed long before he entered the annals of philosophy by virtue of his epoch-makingbook Sein und Zeit (Beingand Time). Enough, though, about my early heuristicexperience.I do not want to speakhere about the darkerside of Heidegger's teachings and person. This will suffice for my apprenticeyears. After students have sharpened their swords,so to speak,with seminar assignmentsover a long period, with the doctorthe moment arrives, al dissertation, when they come to gripswith a body of materialand experiencescholarshipas an activity of their own. Based on one's course of study, chance plays a role in the

a completely mythologically encoded form of thought-that attracted a It was the experienceof philosopher? immersingmyself in the texts, where I heardvoices for which my earshad been sharpenedby Heidegger's analysis of existenceand also by the general intellectualclimateof the time. Up to that point research had focusedon the diverseorigins of the many individual motifs in the Gnostic polyphony,tracingthem back to Platonic, Jewish, Babylonian,Egyptian, and Iranian traditions, which had somehow merged syncretistically. The question of the specific motif that had been the organizingprinciple behind the syncretism and had determined the often bold transformation of the borrowingsremained unexamined. Gnosticism was given no creditat all for havingan independent characterof its own, but this was exactlywhat the "voices" I have mentioned suggestedto me. A troubled existence,disquietedby its own
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mystery,anxious for an answer,was announcing itself. If one listened carefully, the syncretism became a surface phenomenon, its invented myths revealinga comprehensible fndamental experience, common to them all, that had found objectiveexpression there-one that had both revealedand concealed itself. These myths gave a speculative answer to the problem of existence-namely, "gnosis."It was the experienceof an essentiallyotherworldlyself, a self in bondage to the world, which then had to free itself from that bondage. From this perspective I believed I could decode the myths. Thus, I found the hermeneutical task-a kind of demythologizing-almost bewitchingly attractive. Nothing is more fascinatingthan to experience the way disparatesources crystallize aroundan exploratory interpretation, the way the many individualdetails, previously seen as separate entities, coalesceto form a unity.This crystallization process advances and lends strength to a new point of view, the bias of which is perhapsits inevitable price and may be correctedby other lateron. interpreters Assuming my interpretationwas right, was it worthwhile to do this decoding?Was it more than an antiTo me it did seem quariancuriosity? philosophically significant in terms of the history of thought as the culmination, even the excessiveexpression, of the dualism that has led metaphysicsand religion astraysince ancient times. I found it even more significant in existentialterms as an extreme case of crisis in the way we understandourselves and Being, an extreme case of the dichotomy between human being and world, nature and spirit, world and God. The very possibility of such dichotomies says something about the human being, about us. And at the time of my study of Gnosticism we had become especially sensitive to this dichotomy as a result of the crisis in our own relationshipto the world, a crisis that existentialism expressed philosophically in its innerworldly
July-August 2002

way. We too knew something about "alienation." Our crisisrecognizeditself in an earlier one, and that explains in part the fascination to which I succumbed. Eventuallysomething unexpected occurredin my research: what I was cast its reflection back interpreting own as position interpreter upon my and made me see it in a new light. Initially I had found that the approaches I learned in the school of Heideggerenabled me to see aspects of Gnostic thinking that had not been seen before.Returningfrom the distant past to the scene of contemporaryphilosophy,I found that what I had seen there now helped me to betterunderstandmy point of departure. My confrontationwith the nihilism of classicaltimes aided my understanding of modern nihilism, which had equipped me in the first place to discoverits obscurehistorical cousin in the past. Existentialism, which had provided the means for my historical analysis, was itself an inextricable part of its outcome. What did it mean that its categories were applicableto this particular material?Did it indicatethat those catevalid for every gorieswere universally form of human existence?Or were they valid merelyfor this form of existence? Was thereperhapssomething like a concealed affinity here? This the directionof my question reversed the interpretation: successof an "existentialist"reading of Gnosticism invited a quasi-Gnosticreadingof existentialismand with it of the modern mind as well. It was my long involvement with dualismthat was of particular benefit to me in re-examining the German field of the philosophy of consciousnessin which I had been trained. With its adherence to the Cartesianseparation of mind and nature, it was a field that sufferedfrom a markedworldlessness.

II
I come to the second phase of my intellectualcareer, which, after a hiatus caused by emigrations Now

and military service and by moving to anothercontinent, turnedfrom researchin intellectualhistory to more systematic considerations. For behind the study of history, which I had never intended to pursue in the long run, there awaited the permanent and essential questions of philosophy concerning the nature of Being and with it the Beingof nature. Strangeto say,however,the question of "nature" had nevercome up in my courseof studies,and the new AngloAmerican intellectual environment helped me to become aware of this gap and to begin an attempt to close it. Fromtime to time when I was still in Germany, doubts would arise in my mind about the adequacyof the prevailing philosophical themes being dealt with. Heidegger had talkedabout existenceas care,but he did so from an exclusively intellectual There was no mention of perspective. the primaryphysical reason for having to care,which is our corporeality, by which we-ourselves a partof nature, needy and vulnerable-are indissolubly connected to our natural environment,most basicallythrough metabolism, the prerequisite of all life. Human beings must eat. This naturallaw of the body is as cardinal as the mortality accompanying it. But in Beingand Timethe body had been omitted and nature shunted aside as something merely present. Phenomenology too, in Husserl's sense, could, to be sure, treat the theme of the phenomenon of individual corporeality and, for example, describe the feeling of hunger. But hunger's objectivemeaning-namely, that the human animal requires nourishment and in certain quantities (of which the Marxistsof course reminded us )-lay outside of phenomenology's subjective field of vision. Biology and, more basically, physics teach us about such matters, but we had been told nothing about these disciplines.None of our philosophy professorsurged us to acquaint ourselveswith new developmentsin the natural sciences. They were viewed, if at all, not in terms of their
HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 31

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content but only in terms of their method, as a question of epistemology. Furthermore,naturalphilosophy had long ceased to be a respectable philosophicaldiscipline. But isn'twhat the naturalsciences bringto light relevantfor the concept of Being, which is, after all, philosophy'sconcern?Isn'tit relevantalso for the theory of our own being, which in spite of its transcendenceremains partof the whole-genealogically according to the theory of evolution, ontologically by virtue of our body? My feeling was that the idealistic point of view,whethertranscendental or existential, was not sufficient,but I had to wait to explore this question until I had the opportunityto devote myself to it seriously. An opportunity presented itself during my years as a soldier in the Second WorldWarwhen my historical research was interrupted and I was limited to thinking about that which doesn't require books and libraries because we always have it within us. Perhapsmy physicalexposure to danger,a situation in which the precariousness of the body's fate becomes evident and fearof its mutilation becomes paramount, was responsible for my new reflections.In any case, I became keenly aware of the ideologicalbias of the philosophical tradition. I saw its hidden dualism-the legacy of a thousand years-contradicted by the organism, whose mode of being we sharewith all life. Understandingthis organism ontologically would close the gulf the psyche's separating understanding of itself from the teachingsof physics. I now saw my goal to be a philosophy of organic matter or a philosophical biology. This became my postwar pursuit. For this purpose, a knowledge of the science of biology, both its discoveries and its methodology, was necessary. In order to gain this knowledge I became a student once again. In spite of all the fascination the subject held for me, my experience of this science unavoidablyremained secondhand, for someone
32 HASTINGS CENTER REPORT

who doesn't himself work in a field but only looks at its findingsnaturally remainsa layman. In "Scholarship as a Vocation" Max Weber speaks with memorableeloquenceabout the destiny of the specialist: Whoever does not "possess the abilityto put on so to blinders, speak, and become convinced that the fate passionately of his soul depends upon his making this particular conjecture correctly about this passagein this manuscript should definitely stay away from Never will he gain a feelscholarship. ing for what can be calledthe 'experience' of scholarship." To be sure, what is meant here is the voluntary use of blinders that scholars (in Weber's example,philologists)put on for the sake of theirwork but can remove again when they have finished and have added their findings to the fund of generalknowledge.And outsiders who take the trouble can understand the conclusions drawn as well as the path leading to them. In other words, specialization in the humanitiesdoes not excludecommunication and is still compatiblewith a unity of culture.As everyoneknows, this is not the case with the natural sciences today; what takes place at the forefront of knowledge has become an esotericsecretfor the initiated and a mystery for everyone else. Neither the ways of thinking nor their conclusions,with the accompanying technical terminology,are intellectually accessible to outsiders, who cannot adequately understand either the knowledge gained or its method of attainment. Thus, the overwhelmingmajority of our contemporaries,including the educated, find themselvescondemned to wearing blinders permanently,especially with regardto basicscientificpremises on the one hand and on the other to their technologicalimpact, which determines the lives of us all. The unity of our intellectualculture has been split asunder. If therewere no way to bridgethis split, I would have found it impossible to continue with my philosophical work in the directionI now found

necessary.But there are ways. One bridge built for the nonspecialist is the new category of literatureabout the natural and physical sciences, which appearedin response to this situation-serving as a real intermediary between specialist and layman-and which even leadingscientists are not above producing. The new insights into the foundationsof nature and the changed picture of it they have brought about could not enter the generalconsciousness without this sort of mediation. With its help and with sufficient effort one can, more or less, gain an idea of what is taking place in current research, of what is coming to light there.As a result,one can feel a proper senseof awe in the faceof the wondersof realityand also become aware of the gapsthat will inevitablyremain in our knowledge. It is only an approximateidea, to be sure, but one that can suffice for the needs of the philosopherand for what he is really concernedabout.Afterall, in this age of specialization philosophy must often draw on indirect knowledge if it is not to shrinkinto the specialized study of a limited areathat it claims for itself. If philosophy remainstrue, as it should, to its inherent integrative purpose,which must covermany individual fields of knowledge, then it is obligatedby the natureof its vocation to take the constant risk involved in nonspecialization.An attempt to philosophize about nature today (unlessit is undertaken by a researcherin the sciences) involves an extreme risk, and I gratefully acknowledgewhat I have learnedfrom the kind of literature to. just referred In addition, I was fortunateto have close associations with representatives of the exact sciences in America,my new home; in the second half of my life I learnedmore from them than I did from my American contemporariesin philosophy. Within the realm of the natural sciences, the distancesto be bridged by outsidersvarywith the individual disciplines. In biology, with its subject matter so basicallyfamiliarand
2002 July-August

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close to us, it was my good fortune as a philosopher that the distance was less than that of theoreticalphysics, which deals with the thoroughly abstractdomain of quanta and elementaryparticles. By means of the literatureI have described, biology revealed to me the wonders of life, its evolution, its abundance of forms, modes of functioning, stratification of stages: in short, the whole adventureof organicbeing-balanced between being and nonbeing, vulnerable,endlessly inventive-in the midst of inorganicnature.With all this beforemy eyes and continuallylearning more and more about the subject, I could now tacklemy philosophicalproject.

never even heard in my seven years of studyingphilosophyat Germanuniversities. (I know this is no longer the case today.) His powerful ontological treaand Reality: An Essay in Costise, Process mology, develops-with unparalleled radicalism and altogether new basic concepts (resulting from his intimate knowledgeof modern physics)-a concept of Being that strives to overcome its traditionalbifurcationby conceiving of all Being, down to its simplest elements, in organic categoriesand as endowed with attributes of inwardness. ForvariousreasonsI could not go along with him on his highly speculativepath (reminiscentof Leibnizand Spinoza).I did draw couragefrom his great exam-

III
T et me now recount how I came to
the thirdand final taskof my philothe question of ethics. sophicalcareer: Thus far in this autobiographical account the relationship betweenphilosophy and the natural sciences has been posited as a theoreticalone in which philosophicaltheory drawson both the content and method of scientifictheory. The natural sciences, however, have their eminently practical side in the form of technology, which increasingly the lives of us all, whetherwe reshapes flect upon the situation or not. But we must reflectupon it in order to keep it from becoming a fate we have unthinkingly brought upon ourselves.I, along with many others, became increasingly aware that such a fate had become a threaton a worldwidescale.This awareness finallyforcedme to turn from theoretical to practicalreason-that is, to which becamethe centralinterest ethics, and theme of the last stage of my intellectualjourney.It was no longer the joy of acquiringknowledgebut fear of the future,fearfor humanity,that primarily motivatedmy thought. My thinking itself represented an act of responsibility, a concept I then attemptedto work out and communicate in philosophical terms.In conclusion,I would like to say somethingadditionalabout this subjective experiencepeculiarto practical philosophy:namely,that workingon a theory is alreadypartof the practiceit prescribes-in other words, that one obeys the theory'sown imperativeas soon as one catches sight of it. Such was my final personalexperiencein the course of my intellectualcareer. All knowledge, or what takes itself for such, aims at communication, at adding what it believes to be its own truth to the granddialoguefrom which it has proceeded. Here it tries its luck and experiences its fate. Such a dialogue which requiresthe laborof articulation, although servingto clarifythe thinker's own thought, alwaysin the last analysis strives toward communication.A vital element of all theory, communication must be regarded as part of knowledge's collective course. The thinker'sself-esHASTINGS CENTER REPORT 33

The

natural sciences

have their eminently which

practical

side in the form of technology, shapes situation

increasingly upon the

the lives of us all, whether or not. But we must

we reflect

reflect

upon it in order

to keep it from becoming unthinkingly brought

a fate we have

upon ourselves.

As I have outlined above,this project pie, but in keepingwith my initial intuinvolved,among other things, overcom- ition (and in more Aristotelianfashion) ing the dualism that I had long recog- I continued to focus on the actualbionized as a seductiveerror.My ontologi- logical organism and the summit it cal interpretationof the organism was reachesin the human being. The guidintended to correct this error and to ing principle of my interpretationbea contribution a to came the concept of freedom,which I represent general In of esI detected in its earlystagesin believed concept Being. organicbeing's sential unity of "inner" and "outer," the processof metabolismand saw exfree self and pand in the evolution of animals to subjectivityand objectivity, determined the causally thing, gulf be- higher physical and psychic stages, tween matter and mind closed for me. reaching its pinnacle in the human As part of the Cartesianlegacythis gulf being. Here the hazardousventure of had forcedmodern thought into the ei- freedom, upon which natureembarked ther-or impasse of materialismon the with the adventof life and its frailty, beone hand and idealism on the othercomes a matter of responsibility for each incomplete when taken by itself. human subjects.This introducesthe diThe evidenceprovidedby the organism mension of the ethical,which extends gave the lie to both positions. beyond the concept of Being to that of To my surpriseand delight I found obligation while remaining based on that in the milieu of Anglo-Saxonphi- the former. losophy I was not alone with this approach. I discoveredthe work of Alfred North Whitehead, whose name I had
July-August 2002

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teem naturally contributesto encourthis But the content attitude. aging of a theory itself-its intellectual content-as long as it is purelytheoretical, is neutral regardingcommunication:it permitsitself, so to speak, to be made manifest and public but does not requirethis. The individual thinker is consequentlyfree to heed the content of his theory or to disregardit. Yet in the case of practicalphilosophy or ethics, which concerns the Good and its opposite in human affairs, there is an additional feature that makes the relationshipbetween a theory'scontent and its articulation a very special one: articulationis instrumental in bringing about what the theory has demonstrated to be the Good or that which ought to be accomplished.Articulationis the beginning of an action and thus does not serveonly to advancethe theory, as is generally the case with public presentationof knowledge, but also to deal with the issuesit raises.These issues demand attention and impose a duty on the thinker-not primarily as issuesthat havealready been recognized but as something he must discover for himself. A theory becomes practicalwhen it is worked out, enabling the imperativeit contains to seek a hearing and a place in reality. the demandsof intellectuSurpassing al curiosity,the demands made by a theory's content assign the thinker his role: namely, to become active, throughcontemplation,in helping to work on the task it sets. This is a familiarphenomenon.As I have stated, I discoveredin myself this aspect of thinking that perceives itself as a form of action when I was searchingfor an answer to contemporary technology'sincreasinglyobvious threatto the futureof humanity-indeed, to the future of all life. Because technology is a human invention, not cosmic fate, it presents an ethicalchallengethat must be met with an ethical theory. Ethics had been on my agendafor a long time as the naturallast stage in a philosophy of the organism,a philosophythat of
34 HASTINGS CENTER REPORT

itself leads to ethical considerations because it must face the phenomenon of human freedom. There is a difference, however, between approachingethicswith a systematizing motive in mind and being forcibly confrontedwith it by the shock of reality.When we hearthe word "shock" in this context, it is naturalto think first of the technology that produced nuclear weapons. But what made ethics my preoccupationfor the rest of my life was not so much the danger of a sudden atomic holocaustwhich, after all, can be avoided; rather,it was the cumulativeeffect of the daily and seemingly unavoidable applicationsof technologyas a whole, even in its most peaceful forms. In the face of the latterdanger,the simple "No"that we can say to the horrendous prospect of a nuclear holocaustis useless;technologybecomesa permanent problem for ethical thought-permanent even if we should succeed, through good luck and good sense, in preventing unas we hope we speakable catastrophe, will. Nuclearweapons can ultimately be abolished (by agreement),but we cannot remove the total technological threatwe havebroughtabout,just as we cannot do awaywith technology itself, since it has become indispensablefor our survival.As a result, the preventionof its disastrous effects represents a continuing task for moral theory. In any case, the shock I referred to forced me to measure the enormity of our power in terms of its possible consequencesand made the concept of responsibility the centralconcernof ethics for me. I realized that at the same time the foremostduty this responsibility imposed on me was to work out the concept itself and show its crucialimportance.Forit was now a matterof a new sort of responsibility such as no earlierethics had ever envisaged.Never beforehavewe been forcedto take as much responsibility, and qualitatively, as we quantitatively must today. Our knowledgeand our power were too limited in the past for us to take the distant future into

account, let alone to be awareof the impact we could have on the entire earth. It is only modern technology with the unprecedentedrange of its feats in space and time that has opened up these new horizons.In addition to recognizingthe new magnitude of our power we must also bear in mind the entirely new kinds of power that extend our responsibility, also in qualitativeways, to levels we never knew before and therefore neverconsideredin ethicalterms.All this poses new tasksfor moralreasoning, one of which is to think about our responsibilityin new ways. The attempt to do so is an aspect of the itself. duty of responsibility What I have describedhere is how my thinking developedand how my pursuit of philosophy became personal experiencein my lateryears.

IV
I

JM

accompanied by concerningthe power or impotence, effectiveness or uselessness, of of this sort. Can it be "knowledge" successfulagainst the enormous dynamism of the anonymous powers drivingtechnology'sprogress,against the triumphantadvanceof that other kind of knowledge, representedby the natural sciences, that nourishes it? I do not know; no one knows. There aregroundsfor skepticism,but we have no right to be fatalistic,for such a view would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Knowledge must never write off its own chances. It must performits duty in the face of every uncertainty. It is characteristic for our time that "fearand trembling"have become part of our experience of its inherknowledge,overshadowing ent joyousness.When this knowledge is transmitted, the fear should be communicatedalong with it so that thought becomes a spur to action. But fear must be on guardagainstitself: our worry over the fate of humanity must not arousehostility toward the source of its endangerJuly-August 2002

y experience has inevitably doubts been

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ment-that is, toward science and technology.Rather,fear must inspire caution in the use of our power, not the renunciation of it. For only in league with science and technology, which are part of the human endeavor, can moral reasoningbe of any use in this endeavor.There is no unique formula for how to proceed here; there are many paths we must vigilantly continue to explore and compare, now and in the future.At best, through constant repetition we can become practicedin our search.This is what we must hope for. In any case, it is our intellectualduty to be vigilant. Now that I have reachedthe end of my account, the obvious remains to be said:I have experiencedfrustrations in the pursuitof my intellectual work. What I have attempted to describehere is the changingintentof my thought as its themeschanged;acis another matter.And complishment if we include what this condensed version has omitted-the abortedattempts, the detours, the abandonment of the old taskin each transition to a new one-then the portrayalof my progressbecomes less orderlyand direct than I have presented it here. Nevertheless, if I am to look back over the road I have taken in its en-

tiretyand sum up what motivatedmy desire for knowledge and how the knowledgeI gained turnedinto experience, I would point to three areas: first of all, what is past, which deserves to be made present in knowledge; then, what has alwaysbeenpresent, life with its enduring nature, which wants to be understood from within itself;and finally,thefuture in the light of our caring about it, as something filled with threats to be averted,something that is threatened and must be protected.Care, howevthat its object is worth er,presupposes caring about, and all I had come to understandabout what was past and present came together in my belief that life and humankind-this great adventure of Being, now in jeopardy-are worthwhile, are worth my effort and even torment, including the price of mortality that must be paid in returnfor the constantrejuvenation in the lives of the newborn.A belief like this must be able to say "No" to much that we are doing today, but the belief itself is an emIt is this "Yes," translatbracing"Yes." ed into carefor the future, that is exof Responpressedby "theImperative in belief the sibility."2 My imperative to which I have here confessedrepresents, if you will, the summation of

all my intellectualexperience. That, at least, is the way it appearsto me.

Translators' Acknowledgment

We are gratefulto Lawrence Vogel, of philosophyat Connecticut professor Collegeand editorof HansJonas,Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University, 1996), who

read our translationand made many valuablesuggestions. -Hunter Hannum and Hildegarde Hannum Editor's Acknowledgment

This essaywasoriginally as published (G6ttingen: Vandenhoeck and versionof Ruprecht,1987). An earlier this translationappearedin the New
School University's Graduate Faculty Journal23, no. 1 (2001). Philosophy References Wissenschaft als persinliches Erlebnis

tion of the 600thAnniversary of theRuprecht Karl University of Heidelberg (Heidelberg, 1987). 2. [SeeJonas's TheImperative of ResponsiIn Search theTechnologbility: ofan Ethicsfor ical Age, translated by the authorwith the collaboration of David Herr(Chicago: Universityof ChicagoPress,1984). -Trans.]

1.Thetideof a lecture delivered October of the six-hun15, 1986,on the occasion dredthanniversary of the Ruprecht Karl alsopublished in TheCelebraUniversity;

2002 July-August

HASTINGS CENTER REPORT 35

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