Technology as a Threat to the Image of Human Being in Times of “Metaphysical Neutralization” according to Hans Jonas

Abstract

In this article, we will analyze how, according to Hans Jonas, technology (more specifically biotechnology) presents itself as a threat to the image of the human being and, conversely, how the ethics of responsibility, being an ethics of the future, must take on the task of preserving this image. To do this, we will begin by analyzing the concept of image and how the advance of technological powers has ended up leading to the meliorist program of supposedly perfecting the human being, even though [1] he lacks an image as a reference for such reform (given that we are in the era of “metaphysical neutralization”) and that, as a consequence, [2] it contains unprecedented and irreversible risks that can lead to the impoverishment and perishing of the image of Human Being as we have known it until now. We will see how Jonas opposes Bloch’s “ontology of not-yet-being” to an ontology of the “already there” of the “true man”. If, in the first case, it is a question of opening up the image of Human Being to the reform of meliorist projects, in the second it is a question of preserving him as a being of freedom and, above all, of responsibility.