Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology Book

In this series of twelve essays, Jonas critiques a Western philosophy of mind and a Western philosophy of the organism. His main argument runs something like this: Descartes separated the human mind from its body; the mind then ascends in Western science,the body floats away to insignificance, and modern-day existentialism and nihilism is the result. There is now a "reduction of the formal essence of life to the vanishing point of a mere vital momentum without specific original content...." Nothingness springs from the denial of essence and, with nihilism, man loses a "being" that transcends "the flux of becoming."

The Darwinist picture ends up in the same spot, as a "Cartesian position without its metaphycial [sic?] cargo." The organism is merely a machine in a clockwork universe, run by a "mathematical god." Random mutations are acted on by the external force of natural selection. Progress is by "elimination," which is a "negative substitute for teleology." Evolution is "advance through mischance, of ascent by accident." There's no perpetual form that transcends change. "Being is becoming." The essence of life is "just self-preservation, which is analogous to the inertial laws ruling the conduct of a particle." Something like "The will to power," Jonas concludes, "seemed the only alternative left if the original essence of man had evaporated in the transitoriness and whimsicality of the evolutionary process."

This is not Jonas' vision. His philosophy of life goes back to its origins or close to it. Metabolism is the first form of that freedom that emancipated life from matter. Self-preservation was not at all random and mindless. Even at this lowest level, life "prefigures mind," Jonas argues, because there was variability in how to attain life's end. The purpose of life, the essential ends of life, are fixed, species by species. But the objects and actions related to these ends are variable and subject to choice - a degree of free choice based on what the organism faces. Within a species itself, there is variability that constitutes an "individuality" and a sense of self, "however faint its voice." With the separation from plants, animal motility began the long path toward the separation of action from purpose. Through perception, animals bridged the gap between here and there. Emotion, as desire, bridged the gap between now and then. What was wanted was over there, which is a separation of the organism from the object in space in time.

"To move and to feel" is the animal soul. This is Jonas' vision of the animal organism. "Animal being is... essentially passionate being," he states. "Living things are creatures of need. Only living things have needs and act on needs. Need is based both on the necessity for the continuous self-renewal of the organism by the metabolic process, and on the organism's elementary urge thus precariously to continue itself." Need manifests itself on the level of animality as appetite, fear and "all the rest of the emotions." Need propels the animal self outward across space and time, reaching out for objects to satisfy need and fear picks up and wards off threats and danger. The other emotions are the supporting cast. Animals are not mindless, soulless or passive beings subject solely to random mutation and external pressure. Animal life takes an active role through its own mindful freedom in ensuring its own existence. It is this passion to live that is the animal's form and essence, and it is this that allows them, in some degree, to create their existence. They are existentialists with purpose. They don't have the luxury for despair. Animals are existentialists with soul.

If Jonas had stopped his argument here he would have left his reader with a substantially new vision for humanity, one that is continuous with the rest of animal life, despite the differences in mental capacity. But in his transition essay, Jonas says "we have passed the borderline between the physical and the mental sphere" and this is where "biology cedes the field to a philosophy of man." With evolution's progressive freedom ending in the human mind, the connection between purpose and action is severed. With our mental freedom, we wander around without soul. We are anchorless and we wonder about the meaning of existence. It's no wonder that there is existential despair. It's no wonder we can get a Sartre who makes stuff up to fill this nothingness.

The latter series of essays are dense and it's not clear to me where Jonas himself ends up about all of this. Yet the answers are all there in the first half of this book. In our biology lies our essence. It's built on self-preservation, but it is not "merely" self-preservation. Freedom, right, justice and other philosophical themes are embedded in that notion, as well as our social and tribal nature, and our fear of death and religious impulses. And we also have a capacity for beauty and for wandering into the distant corners of the cosmos. These are by-products - the sweetest layer of freedom - of a mind that was designed to help us survive.