The philosophical theology of Hans Jonas

Abstract

In this article, we will analyze Hans Jonas’s proposal of a philosophical theology, focusing on the concept of God. The aim is to examine Jonas’s attempt to transcend the objectifying language typical of science and much of modern philosophy without falling into a strictly theological approach: this is accomplished as the task of a “philosophical theology,” whose antecedents can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Understanding this strategy is essential, as it both seeks to resolve the controversy surrounding the presence of God in Jonas’s work and explains why he carefully uses the words “theory” and “concept” in his two texts on God. This study will be developed mainly from unpublished texts in the Hans Jonas Philosophisches Archiv at the University of Konstanz. Among these texts, we will highlight the notes surrounding the Theory of God: a course taught in Ottawa in the winter semester of 1952-1953 and later replicated in New York. The analysis of the central points of this text demonstrates that the question of God is strategic for the philosopher, either because it recovers a central question of philosophy or because it connects with the effort to break with the prevailing materialism in the tradition.