Verantwortung im Spannungsfeld zwischen Machtentfaltung und Verletzlichkeit: Die Umkehr des Verantwortungsverständnisses bei Hans Jonas

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show how Has Jonas arrived to develop a completely new concept of responsibility by operating a sort of reversion of the classic theories of responsibility. If in the past the holder of power (God, the Sovereign, the Law) obligated the subjected to justify himself, in Jonas' conception it is the fragile and the vulnerable being that becomes the instance of justification for the powerful in face to which he has to respond. Thus, in The Principle of Responsibility the power relations are reversed in a way that the more power one holds, the more responsibility he has in regard to the fragile and the weak.

Keywords

• Hans Jonas, responsibility, being, human being, ontology, ethics, power relations