Identity, Inwardness, and Vulnerability: The Three Dimensions of Hans Jonas’s Philosophy of Life

Abstract

Identity, inwardness, and vulnerability constitute the three fundamental dimensions of Hans Jonas’s philosophy of life. Identity reveals the dialectic of the organism—simultaneously dependent on and independent from matter—and establishes an implicit connection between living beings and agency, a link absent in the mechanistic world. Inwardness, through its openness to nature as a whole, demonstrates that ethics does not originate in the autonomous invention of the human subject, but arises instead from the discovery of the organism’s intrinsic purposiveness. Vulnerability, for its part, imposes a dual demand: on one hand, it requires us to continuously resist the threat of non-being; on the other, it calls upon us to protect this very vulnerability, guarding against the harm that unbounded developments in biotechnology may inflict upon it. Through an exploration of these three dimensions, this paper aims to provide a deeper theoretical foundation for understanding Jonas’s ethics of responsibility.