Uma liberdade responsável e descentrada em relação à natureza: leitura antropológica de Princípio responsabilidade

This paper explores the anthropology underlying The imperative of responsibility. Jonas develops a non-anthropocentric humanism that takes into account the dehiscence of man in the world and underlies the essential reciprocal link between humanity and nature. Our hypothesis is that the criticism of the technological and Marxist utopia completes Jonas’ response to the acosmical dualism, that is to say a dualism between man and the world (nature), by ontological and ethical arguments. Indeed, if essence of nature and man are mutually interdependent, the consequences of (technological) human action do matter for our humanity as well. But since man is man, he is how he has to be, and one should not try to improve his being as such. Therefore, no human can be sacrificed in the name of a better future of humanity (see the criticism of Bloch). But, following the metabolic logic of living beings, human is characterized by a constant fiat, an acting by which he gains or loses his moral dignity in every single action – a contrast with the cumulative logic of technology. Because of what we name an “anthropology of incommensurables” in which a moral action as always risked, Jonas rejects all utopian anthropological conception that could require a sacrifice of anyone (neither contemporaries for future humanity, nor future generations for the contemporaneous humanity), but he proposes an ethics of renunciation