Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas' book Das Prinzip Verantwortung, one of the definitive works of bioethics, was published in 1979 (the English translation, Imperative of Responsibility, was published 1984). His critique of environmental destruction and the exploitation of global resources in the name of progress has not lost any of its relevance to this day.

Hans Jonas began to question the world around him at an early age. In the face of growing antisemitism, the son of an assimilated industrialist family and the grandson of the chief rabbi of Krefeld resolved to live out his Judaism in public. As a young man he became enthusiastic about Zionism and studied philosophy in Freiburg and Marburg. Shortly after the Nazis came to power, he emigrated first to Great Britain and then to Palestine, where he volunteered for service in the British army in 1940.

After World War II, he first taught in Canada until 1955, when he became a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City and moved permanently to the United States. In 2003, on the occasion of his 100th birthday and ten years after his death, a special postage stamp was issued by Deutsche Post that focused on his ecological imperative: "Act in such a way that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on earth."

Further information and documents

Hans and Lore Jonas Collection; AR 25645

https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/14600