Technology and responsibility: reflections on the new tasks of ethics.--Jewish and Christian elements in philosophy: their share in the emergence of the modern mind.--Seventeenth century and after: the meaning of the scientific and technological revolution.--Socio-economic knowledge and ignorance of goals.--Philosophical reflections on experimenting with human subjects.--Against the stream: comments on the definition and redefinition of death.--Biological engineering--a preview--Contemporary problems in ethics from a Jewish perspective.--Biological foundations of individuality.--Spinoza and the theory of organism.--Sight and thought: a review of "visual thinking."--Change and (...) permanence: on the possibility of understanding history.--The gnostic syndrome: typology of its thought, imagination, and mood.--The hymn of the pearl: case study of a symbol, and the claims for a Jewish origin of gnosticism.--Myth and mysticism: a study of objectification and interiorization in religious thought.--Origen's metaphysics of free will, fall, and salvation: a "divine comedy" of the universe.--The soul in gnosticism and Plotinus.--The abyss of the will: philosophical meditations on the seventh chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans. (shrink)

This book both consummates and demonstrates the basic thrust of Jonas's thought: the inseparability of ethics and metaphysics, the reality of values at the ...

Mayr from biology, Jonas from philosophy, both worked their way—against the philosophical current—toward a biologically informed philosophy that both draws from the natural sciences and reflects a responsibility toward nature.

Discusses the ethical implications of modern technology and examines the responsibility of humanity for the fate of the world.

O texto apresentado a seguir é uma traduçáo da conferência intitulada “The Burden and Blessing of Mortality” ( The Hastings Center Report , 22, n. 1, jan-fev. 1992, p. 34-40), que foi apresentada à Fundaçáo do Palácio Real [The Royal Palace Foundation], em Amsterdam, no dia 19 de março de 1991. Esta conferência foi traduzida para o alemáo por Reinhard Löw e revisada pelo próprio Jonas, aparecendo com o título “Last und Segen der Sterblichkeit” em Scheidewege 21, 1991/92, p. 26-40, (...) e mais tarde em um livro do próprio Jonas: Philosophische Untersuchungen und metaphysische Vermutungen [Investigações Filosóficas e Suposições Metafísicas] . Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 1992, p. 81-100. Por sua vez, o texto original, em inglês, veio ainda a fazer parte de uma coletânea de ensaios de Jonas, editada por Lawrence Vogel ( Mortality and Morality : a search for good after Auschwits. Ed. Lawrence Vogel. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1996, p. 87-97). (shrink)

A definição do homem como fim em si é a chave simultaneamente ética e antropológica da metafísica kantiana. A partir de uma reflexão de George Steiner sobre a experiência do desumano no século XX, o presente artigo visa interpretar aquela tese kantiana à luz das contribuições de Heidegger e de Hans Jonas, ambas radicadas numa nova Ontologia, em que o humano só ocupa um lugar central na medida em que se constitui como resposta ao apelo do ser (Heidegger) e, portanto, (...) como instância única que dele pode e, portanto, deve responder (Jonas). /// The definition of human being as an end in itself is both an ethical and an anthropological key to the Kantian metaphysics. Following the reflection of George Steiner on the experience of the in-humane in XXth century, the author of the article aims at an interpretation of the above mentioned kantian thesis in the light of the contributions of both Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas. The article assumes that both these authors are grounded in a new ontology, one in which the human only occupies a central place in the measure in which he constitutes itself in terms of an answer to the call of being (Heidegger) and, thus, as an unique instance that can, and therefore ought, to give an answer (Jonas). (shrink)