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Reading Heidegger against the Grain: Hans Jonas on Existentialism, Gnosticism, and Modern Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2021

Daniel M. Herskowitz
Daniel M. Herskowitz*
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, University of Oxford
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues that the link Hans Jonas drew between Martin Heidegger's philosophy and Gnosticism cannot be properly understood without taking into consideration his philosophical interpretation of modern science. It claims that Jonas saw Heideggerian existentialism not as a modern instantiation of Gnosticism but as a specific experiential reaction to the new cosmological outlook that emerged from the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, which negated the conceptual world that made Gnosticism possible. Jonas's interpretation is “against the grain”: by claiming that Heidegger's thought is a product of the reduction of nature to measurable, manipulable, and calculable extension governing the modern scientific mind, Jonas attributed to Heidegger the very flaws Heidegger critiqued in others. It is further claimed that Jonas's original contribution to Heidegger's reception history is not in proposing the link to Gnosticism but in reading him as the philosophical outcome of the instrumental reasoning of modern science.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 527 - 550
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Some of the noteworthy figures involved in this debate were Hans Blumenberg, Odo Marquard, Karl Löwith, Gershom Scholem, Eric Voegelin, Jacob Taubes, and Susan Taubes. Styfhals, Willem, No Spiritual Investment in the World: Gnosticism and Postwar German Philosophy (Ithaca, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 On Jonas's time in Marburg and his relation to Heidegger see Jonas, Hans, Erinnerungen, ed. Wiese, Christian (Frankfurt am Main, 2003), 108–28Google Scholar; Wiese, Christian, The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions (Waltham, MA, 2007), 1–33Google Scholar; Wasserstrom, Steven M., “Hans Jonas in Marburg, 1928,” in Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava and Wiese, Christian, eds., The Legacy of Hans Jonas: Judaism and the Phenomenon of Life (Leiden, 2010), 39–72Google Scholar.

3 Jonas, Hans, Gnosis und spätantiker Geist. Teil I: Die mythologische Gnosis (Göttingen, 1934)Google Scholar.

4 Jonas, Hans, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology (Chicago and London, 1966), 211–34, at 229Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, Herskowitz, Daniel M., Heidegger and His Jewish Reception (Cambridge, 2020), 103–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lazier, Benjamin, God Interrupted: Heresy and the European Imagination between the World Wars (Princeton, 2008), 27–59Google Scholar; Lapidot, Elad, “Hans Jonas’ Work on Gnosticism as Counterhistory,” Philosophical Readings 9/1 (2017), 61–8Google Scholar; Wolin, Richard, Heidegger's Children: Hannah Arendt, Karl Löwith, Hans Jonas, and Herbert Marcuse (Princeton, 2001) 101–33Google Scholar; Hotam, Yotam, “Overcoming the Mentor: Heidegger's Present and the Presence of Heidegger in Karl Löwith's and Hans Jonas’ Postwar Thought,” History of European Ideas 35 (2009), 253–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kurt Rudolph, “Hans Jonas and Research on Gnosticism from a Contemporary Perspective,” in Tirosh-Samuelson and Wiese, The Legacy of Hans Jonas, 91–106; Kalman P. Bland, “Reflections on the Place of Gnosticism in the Thought of Hans Jonas,” in ibid., 483–91; Wiese, Christian, “‘Revolt against Escapism’: Hans Jonas's Response to Martin Heidegger”, in Fleischacker, Samuel, ed., Heidegger's Jewish Followers: Essays on Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas (Pittsburgh, 2008) 151–77Google Scholar; Brumlik, Micha, Die Gnostiker: Der Traum von der Selbsterlösung des Menschen (Frankfurt am Main, 1992)Google Scholar; Vogel, Lawrence, “Hans Jonas's Diagnosis of Nihilism: The Case of Heidegger,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3/1 (1995) 55–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Vittorio Hösle discusses this, among other things, in his “Hans Jonas's Position in the History of German Philosophy,” in Tirosh-Samuelson and Wiese, The Legacy of Hans Jonas, 19–38.

7 Cahana, Jonathan, “A Gnostic Critic of Modernity: Hans Jonas from Existentialism to Science,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 86/1 (2018), 158–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Gershom Scholem, “Letter to Hans Jonas of November 14, 1977,” in Scholem, Briefe: 1971–1982, ed. I. Shedletzky (Munich, 2000), 160. On Scholem and Jonas see Wiese, Christian, “‘For a Time I Was Privileged to Enjoy His Friendship’: The Ambivalent Relationship between Hans Jonas and Gershom Scholem,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 49 (2004), 25–58Google Scholar; Wiese, The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas, 65. Cf. also Jonas, Hans, “Delimitation of the Gnostic Phenomenon: Typological and Historical,” in Bianchi, Ugo, ed., Le origini dello Gnosticismo: Colloquio di Messina 13–18 Aprile 1966 (Leiden, 1967), 90–108Google Scholar. This means that for Jonas, Gnosticism was indeed a “well-defined historical concept” and not simply a “metaphor,” and it was more than just a signifier for “dualism, designating both divine absence and worldly nihilism.” Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment, 22, 10.

9 Jonas, Hans, “Response to G. Quispel's ‘Gnosticism and the New Testament’,” in Hyatt, J. Philip, ed., The Bible in Modern Scholarship (London, 1965), 279–93, at 293Google Scholar. Cahana correctly urges, “The idea that Jonas even tried to ‘overcome Gnosticism’ is highly misleading and should be abandoned completely.” Cahana, “A Gnostic Critic of Modernity,” 176. Lazier, God Interrupted, 146, claims that “Jonas hoped to defeat the Gnostic threat but could do so only by first resurrecting it,” but in truth Jonas was doing neither: he was not hoping to defeat the Gnostic threat, nor was he trying to resurrect it; neither option matched his historical understanding of what Gnosticism was.

10 Jonas's analysis and critique of modern science is key to understanding his original thought as a whole, and he returns to it often. See, for example, his The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, trans. David Herr (Chicago, 1984); Jonas, Hans, “Seventeenth Century and After: The Meaning of the Scientific and Technological Revolution,” in Jonas, Philosophical Essays: From Ancient Creed to Technological Man (Englewood Cliffs, 1974), 45–80Google Scholar; and Jonas, “Contemporary Problems in Ethics from a Jewish Perspective,” in ibid., 168–82. In his “Is Faith Still Possible? Memories of Rudolf Bultmann and Reflections on the Philosophical Aspects of His Work,” in Jonas, Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz (Evanston, 1996), Jonas challenges the scientific assumptions of his former mentor's notion of demythologization.

11 Heidegger, Martin, “The Question Concerning Technology,” in Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. Krell, David F. (New York, 1993), 307–42Google Scholar. See also Dallmayr, Fred, “Heidegger on Macht and Machenschaft,” Continental Philosophy Review 34 (2001), 247–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rojcewicz, Richard, The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger (Albany, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 While Heidegger is the target of devastating criticism in this collection, his mark on Jonas's “existential” interpretation of biological organisms is undisputable. As Vogel put it, the core of the argument developed in The Phenomenon of Life is Jonas “extending his teacher's categories to nature as a whole.” Vogel, Lawrence, “‘The Outcry of Mute Things’: Hans Jonas's Imperative of Responsibility,” in Macauley, D., ed., Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology (New York, 1996), 167–85, at 170Google Scholar.

13 Hans Jonas, “The Practical Uses of Theory,” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 188–210, at 201.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Hans Jonas, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism,” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 38–57, at 41.

17 Jonas, “The Practical Uses of Theory,” 198.

18 Ibid., 204.

19 Ibid., 207.

20 Hans Jonas, “Life, Death, and the Body in the Theory of Being,” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 7–26, at 12.

21 See the appendix to Jonas's analysis of Darwinism, “The Meaning of Cartesianism for the Theory of Life,” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 58–63, at 60.

22 Hans Jonas, “Is God a Mathematician?,” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, 54–91, at 72.

23 See ibid., 72–3.

24 Jonas, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism,” 45.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 44.

27 Ibid., 45.

28 Ibid., 57.

29 Ibid., 47.

30 Ibid., original emphasis.

31 Ibid., 47–8. Jonas's link between Darwinism and existentialism is generally overlooked in the scholarship on his intellectual relation to Heidegger. A rare exception is Wolin, Heidegger's Children, 112.

32 This collection was then published in German as Hans Jonas, Organismus und Freiheit: Ansätze zu einer philosophischen Biologie (Göttingen, 1973).

33 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 211. It is important to remember the circularity involved in Jonas's approach to Heidegger and existentialism through the lens of Gnosticism: his understanding of Gnosticism as an existential attitude is in itself in debt to, and articulated by means of, Heidegger's conceptuality. Jonas's interpretation of Gnosticism eventually came under attack for being beholden to Heidegger while insufficiently grounded in the appropriate history and textual corpus. See the discussion and the reviews of Jonas's work cited by Waldmen, Michael, “Hans Jonas’ Construct ‘Gnosticism’: Analysis and Critique,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 8/3 (2000), 341–72Google Scholar. See also King, Karen L., What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA, 2003)Google Scholar; Williams, Michael A., Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton, 1999)Google Scholar.

34 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 217.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid., 212.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., 213.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., 215.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., 216.

44 One can say that much of Jonas's mature thought—his philosophy of life, his ethics, and his theology—revolves around developing the appropriate response to the deaths of nature and of God that he claims mark the modern condition.

45 Jonas references an article by Löwith where a more expansive analysis of “the role of Pascal as the first existentialist” is found. Löwith, Karl, “Man between Infinities,” Measure: A Critical Journal 1 (1950), 297–310Google Scholar. Dreyfus likewise lists Pascal as the beginning of modern existentialism, though for him Pascal's “overwhelming experience” was fundamentally a religious one. See Dreyfus, Hubert L., “The Roots of Existentialism,” in Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Wrathall, Mark A., eds., A Companion to Phenomenology and Existentialism (Malden, MA, 2006), 135–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment, 50–51, notes that Jonas “was interested in the Gnostic aspects of Baconian science and twentieth-century existentialism, both of which he considered nihilistic.” I argue that according to Jonas's own conceptuality, these cannot be considered “Gnostic aspects” and that the nihilism of existentialism is conceptually linked to, and the philosophical outcome of, Baconian science.

47 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 218.

48 Ibid., 229.

49 Ibid., original emphasis.

50 Martin Heidegger, “Nietzsche's Word ‘God is Dead’,” in Heidegger, Off the Beaten Track, ed. and trans. Julian Young and Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge, 2002). On this theme see, among many, Hemming, Laurence, Amiridis, Kostas, and Costea, Bogdan, eds., The Movement of Nihilism: Heidegger's Thinking after Nietzsche (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.

51 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 225.

52 Ibid., 225.

53 Ibid., 227.

54 While “Letter on Humanism” is a later piece by Heidegger, Jonas claims in this essay that he is referring to Heidegger's earlier work alone: “I am speaking here throughout of Sein und Zeit, not of the later Heidegger, who is certainly no ‘Existentialist’” (Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 231). Jonas deals with Heidegger's later thought in a different essay, written about a decade later and also published in The Phenomenon of Life, “Heidegger and Theology?”. Jonas, like many, perceives a break or “turn” (Kehre) between Heidegger's earlier and later thinking, and he judges the world of Heidegger's later philosophy not to be godless and indifferent, which made the comparison with Gnosticism possible, but animated by the vitality of “gods” and “fate,” and therefore able to be designated “paganism,” a category not historically and conceptually specific. A critical examination of this later essay, however, cannot be pursued here.

55 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 231.

56 Ibid., 227 n. 14.

57 Ibid., 231.

58 Ibid., 230, original emphasis.

59 Lazier compares Jonas's view of science with Hans Blumenberg's, noting their shared concerns and some parallels between the two narratives of Western thought they weave. In his The Legitimacy of the Modern Age Blumenberg argues, “The thesis I intend to argue here begins by agreeing that there is a connection between the modern age and Gnosticism, but interprets it in the reverse sense: the modern age is the second overcoming of Gnosticism.” Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Wallace, Robert (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 126Google Scholar. Lazier rightly states that “where Blumenberg found his hero in the figure and program of Francis Bacon, there Jonas found his unwitting villain,” but he does not link Jonas's views of modern science to his assessment of Heidegger and Gnosticism. Lazier, God Interrupted, 49–59, 53. Styfhals, on the other hand, is attentive to the importance of modern science to Jonas's Heidegger–Gnosticism comparison (cf., for example, Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment, 50–60), and in some respects this essay complements his analysis. He does, however, follow Lazier in claiming that Gnosticism became for Jonas “a dangerous force that had to be overcome to save modernity” (ibid., 42) and in speaking of the Gnostic “return in modern nihilism” (ibid., 51).

60 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 221.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid., 232.

63 Ibid., 224.

64 Ibid., 232.

65 Compare Jonas's denial of the “present” in Heidegger with Cassirer's opposite claim, that in Sein und Zeit “all temporality has its roots in the ‘present moment’ [Augenblick] seen in a religious sense.” Ernst Cassirer, “The Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms,” in Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, vol. 4, ed. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene, trans. John Michael Krois (New Haven, 1994), 200. Jonas himself employs a version of this notion in his article “Immortality and the Modern Temper” to describe the moment of eternity or immortality in our finite world. For a general discussion of this important concept see Ward, Koral, Augenblick: The Concept of the “Decisive Moment” in 19th- and 20th-Century Western Philosophy (Farham, 2009)Google Scholar.

66 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 233.

67 Jonas, “Gnosticism, Existentialism, and Nihilism,” 233.

68 Lapidot claims that Jonas's work on Gnosticism also includes a formulation of an alternative intellectual history, a “counterhistory,” of the West. As he puts it, “Jonas does not only re-tell the story of Gnosticism, he also re-tells the story of Western thought.” Lapidot, “Hans Jonas’ Work on Gnosticism as Counterhistory,” 61. I believe that if Jonas can be said to retell the story of Western thought, it is only in terms of recasting it through the hermeneutical mold of “dualism.” Gnosticism is one radical instance of dualism, modern existentialism another. They share some views, but also differ is some fundamental ways. Rehearsing the story of modernity through the lens of Gnosticism alone misses out on everything “modern” in modernity, and that, according to Jonas's own understanding, as I argue, is quite a bit.

69 Cf. Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment, 136–7. This does not mean that Gnosticism was not also a constructive source for Jonas, as argued by Cahana, “A Gnostic Critic of Modernity,” and by Fossa, Fabio, “Nihilism, Existentialism—and Gnosticism? Reassessing the Role of the Gnostic Religion in Hans Jonas's Thought,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 46/1 (2020), 64–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Fossa states correctly that “Even though the essay spends many words exploring the affinity between Gnosticism and Existentialism, the central point is nonetheless that the two systems of thought are fundamentally dissimilar.” I do not agree, however, that “Jonas's critique of dualism must be kept separated from his critique of nihilism,” nor that he did not consider Gnosticism nihilistic, as Fossa argues. Ibid., 68, 67.

70 This background is vividly depicted in Lazier, God Interrupted, 27–59; and Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment, 28–50. See also the essays collected in Peter Eli Gordon and John P. McCormick, eds., Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy (Princeton, 2013).

71 Marck, Siegfried, Die Dialektik in der Philosophie der Gegenwart (Tübingen, 1929), 160–65Google Scholar.

72 Ibid., 163.

73 On this reading of Heidegger see Baring, Edward, Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy (Boston, 2019), 211–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herskowitz, Daniel M., “Heidegger as a Secularized Kierkegaard: Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann Read Sein und Zeit,” in Lapidot, Elad and Brumlik, Micha, eds., Heidegger and Jewish Thought: Difficult Others (London, 2017), 155–74Google Scholar.

74 This interpretation was central to Heidegger's early Christian and Jewish reception. On the former see, among many, Wolfe, Judith, Heidegger and Theology (London, 2014)Google Scholar; Baring, Converts to the Real. On the latter, see Herskowitz, Heidegger and His Jewish Reception.

75 Przywara, Erich, “Drei Richtungen der Phänomenologie,” Stimmen der Zeit 115 (1928), 252–64, at 252Google Scholar.

76 Przywara, Erich, Augustinus: Gestalt als Gefüge (Leipzig, 1934), 72–97Google Scholar; Martin Buber, “What Is Man?” in Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (London, 1947), 118–205, at 174.

77 See Taubes, Susan, “The Gnostic Foundations of Heidegger,” Journal of Religion 34/3 (1954), 155–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Taubes and her occupation with modern philosophical Gnosticism see both Susan Taubes, Die Korrespondenz mit Jacob Taubes 1950–1951, ed. Christina Pareigis (Munich, 2011) and Taubes, Die Korrespondenz mit Jacob Taubes 1952 (Paderborn, 2014). Jacob Taubes, typically, treats Heidegger through the lens of Gnosticism in a number of writings. See, for example, Taubes, Jacob, The Political Theology of Paul, trans. Hollander, Dana (Stanford, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, “Gnosis and the Covert Theology of Antitheology: Heidegger, Apocalypticism, and Gnosticism in Susan and Jacob Taubes,” in H. Kopp-Oberstebrink and H. von Sass, eds., Jacob Taubes between Politics, Philosophy, and Religion (forthcoming, Leiden, 2021).

78 Found in HS 21-1-28, Hans Jonas archive, University of Konstanz. I bring here the transcription of a handwritten draft of his review, without its scribbled emendations. I'd like to thank Jonathan Cahana for providing me with this archival material.

79 On Jonas and von Bertalanffy see Tibaldeo, Roberto Franzini, “Hans Jonas's ‘Gnosticism and Modern Nihilism,’ and Ludwig von Bertalanffy,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 38/3 (2010), 289–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 On this postwar Gnosticism debate see Styfhals, No Spiritual Investment; Lazier, God Interrupted; Hotam, Yotam, “Gnosis and Modernity: A Postwar German Intellectual Debate on Secularisation, Religion and ‘Overcoming’ the Past,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8 (2007), 591–608CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Faber, Richard, Politische Dämonologie: Über modernen Marcionismus (Würzburg, 2007)Google Scholar; Yotam Hotam, Modern Gnosis and Zionism: The Crisis of Culture, Life Philosophy and Jewish National Thought (London, 2006); Ioan Culianu, “The Gnostic Revenge: Gnosticism and Romantic Literature,” in, ed., ed., Gnosis und Politik (Munich, 1984), 290–306.

81 Cf. Voegelin, Eric, “Philosophie der Politik in Oxford,” Philosophische Rundschau 1/1 (1953), 23–48Google Scholar, at 41; Voegelin, New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago, 1952); Voegelin, “On Debate and Existence,” in Voegelin, Collected Works, vol. 12 (Columbia, MO, 1990), 36–51, at 43–4.

82 Jonas can also be added to a long list of thinkers renouncing the “pseudo-concreteness” of Heidegger's philosophy. Among them are Martin Buber, Max Horkheimer, Karl Löwith, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Günter Anders, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gabriel Marcel, and Emmanuel Levinas. It is common in this line of interpretation to criticize what is seen as Heidegger's neglect of the “body,” but this is not the place to elaborate on this theme. See for example, Jonas, “Life, Death, and the Body,” 7–26; Jonas, Hans, “Wissenschaft as Personal Experience,” Hastings Center Report 32/4 (2002), 27–35, at 31CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Jonas, Mortality and Morality, 47. On Jonas's critique of Heidegger's neglect of Dasein's corporeality see Coyne, Lewis, “Phenomenology and Teleology: Hans Jonas's Philosophy of Life,” Environmental Values 26 (2017), 297–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 This critique is sometimes expanded from the ethical to the political: the fixation on Dasein's individuality and lack of intersubjectivity obscures the political dimension of human existence. This point has been developed constructively, albeit differently, by Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss, among others.

84 See Jonas, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism,” 54 n. 7.

85 On Strauss and Jonas see Lawrence Vogel, “Overcoming Heidegger's Nihilism: Leo Strauss versus Hans Jonas,” in Fleischacker, Heidegger's Jewish Followers, 131–50; Herskowitz, Heidegger and His Jewish Reception, 175–219; Daniel M. Herskowitz, “The Call: Leo Strauss on Heidegger, Secularization, and Revelation,” New German Critique 144 (forthcoming 2021).

86 There are, indeed, some important similarities between Heidegger's and Jonas's analyses of the technological dimensions of modernity. On Jonas, Heidegger, and technology see Morris, Theresa, Hans Jonas's Ethics of Responsibility: From Ontology to Ecology (Albany, 2013), 143–86Google Scholar; Jakob, Eric, Martin Heidegger und Hans Jonas: Die Metaphysik der Subjektivität und die Krise der technologischen Zivilisation (Tübingen, 1996), 312–69Google Scholar.

87 See Jürgen Habermas, “Mit Heidegger gegen Heideggers Denken: Zur Veröffentlichung von Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 1935,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 July 1953.