5 Quotes & Sayings By Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas (1889-1961) was the son of a rabbi and a court clerk. He studied law at Berlin and Vienna universities, and philosophy and psychology at Geneva. In 1933 he was appointed professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne, where he taught until his retirement in 1948. He was a member of the French Communist Party from 1917 to 1939, but after the Nazi occupation broke with Moscow Read more

In 1953, the year of his retirement, he became a member of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. He died in Paris on October 2, 1961.

1
That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of his projecting meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation.. Will replaces vision; temporality of the act outsts the eternity of the "good-in-itself"As the product of the indifferent, his being, too, must be indifferent. Then the facing of his morality would simply warrant the reaction "let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die." There is no point in caring for what has no sanction behind it in any creative intention. . Hans Jonas
2
Blind nature will nearly always select the most probable, but man can let the most improbable become actual. Hans Jonas
3
It is a changing world because of the newcomers who keep arriving and who leave us behind. Trying to keep pace with them is doomed to inglorious failure, especially as the pace has quickened so much. Hans Jonas
4
It was once religion which threatened us with a last judgment at the end of days. It is now our tortured planet which predicts the arrival of such a day without any heavenly intervention. Hans Jonas