Ethics and Technique in Jonas and Levinas: Differences and Approaches

Abstract

This article presents the thinking of the philosophers Jonas and Levinas, through some texts and passages, specially Technologie et Responsabilité from the first and Heidegger, Gagarine et nous from the latter, about the relation between ethics and technique. Jonas founds his ethics in an Ontology, in which technique is a constitutive part of the human nature. Technique installs human beings in humanity, fact that allows the author to relate it to preservation and continuity of existence in all levels: human and nonhuman. As to Levinas, ethics is the first philosophy and exempts an ontology that prepares it, while technique is seen as that which allows seeing human in all its intensity, leaving it free from the world and from a context, opening thus a possibility of a subjectivity that is welcoming and acceptance of alterity. After characterizing ethics in both authors and situating technique and technology within their philosophical projects, this article seeks for common elements in both thinkers. Such a correlation helps to think an environmental ethics and its fundamental questions such as humanity and animality, finding a common element in the notion of responsibility, essential to both thoughts of ethics. It is through responsibility that such different thoughts keep an openness to alterity, whether it is the alterity of future generations (Jonas)  or the alterity of the other man (Levinas), the figure of which is the notion of face (visage) that, when enlarged, can also include natural beings.