Modernity’s Alienation from Nature and Reason’s Gnostic Temptation: Hans Jonas’s Critique of Heidegger’s Existentialism

Abstract

In Gnosticism, Hans Jonas espies a surprising forerunner to Heideggerian existentialism, according to which there is no source of value outside of Dasein’s resolute confrontation with nothingness. Jonas identifies his “extended discourse with ancient nihilism” as key to “discerning and placing the meaning of modern nihilism.” This paper demonstrates the connection between Jonas’s critique of Heideggerian existentialism as a form of Gnosticism and his philosophic recovery of phusis as the ground for an objective ethics. The paper traces our contemporary crisis of meaning back to its origins in the basic presuppositions of modern natural science in the seventeenth century. By uncovering the root of existentialism’s rebellion against the tradition in our alienation from nature, the paper shows how Jonas’s insights into existentialism as a form of Gnosticism are propaedeutic to his positive philosophic project of elaborating an ontology of life and an imperative of responsibility.