The Promise of Jewish Theistic Naturalism for Jewish Environmental Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Bar Guzi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Ethical Attitude ◽  
Ecological Vulnerability

Abstract This paper seeks to explain the greater appeal of Jewish naturalistic theologies given our greater appreciation today of the ecological vulnerability of our world. By examining the theological writings of two prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers—Hans Jonas and Arthur Green. The paper demonstrates that their espousal of naturalistic yet theistic worldview in their interpretations and reconstructions of Jewish tradition shares significant affinities and promotes an ethical attitude toward the environment. First, I show that Jonas and Green reject reductive forms of naturalism and embrace a nonreductive or “expansive” style of naturalism. Then, I argue that their theologies intend to stimulate a sense of responsibility toward all creation by envisioning humans as partners of a non-omnipotent God. I conclude by noting the metaphysical, epistemological, and moral promises of theistic naturalism to Jewish environmental ethics.

Holiness and Judaism

2018 ◽  
pp. 23-88
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
The Bible ◽  
A Value ◽  
The People ◽  
Sacred And Profane ◽  
The World ◽  
Land Of Israel

This chapter reconstructs the meanings of holiness from representative texts of the Jewish tradition. The discussion is anchored on two claims. First, biblical thought does not divide the world into a neat dualism of sacred and profane. Second, the Bible and subsequent Judaism conceive of holiness in three different ways: holiness sometimes refers to a property, holiness indicates a status, and holiness is a value or project. These three characteristics of holiness are examined in detail using the Bible. The chapter is primarily concerned with the ideas of the holiness of the people of Israel and the holiness of the Land of Israel. It considers the sacred/profane dichotomy by focusing on the views of twentieth-century scholars such as Emile Durkheim, Rudolf Otto, and Mircea Eliade. It also explores holiness and purity as they relate to God before concluding with an analysis of holiness in ancient and medieval rabbinic Judaism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Fritsch ◽  
Philippe Lynes ◽  
David Wood
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Environmental Philosophy ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Hans Jonas

This chapter serves to introduce the reader to eco-deconstruction and the relevance of Derrida’s thought to environmental philosophy more broadly. After situating eco-deconstruction with respect to environmentally-concerned readings of other continental philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, the editors guide the reader’s navigation through the at times perplexing multiplication of related fields, including eco-criticism, eco-phenomenology, posthumanism, new materialism, and more. These examinations are followed by descriptions of the four sections of the book, “diagnosing the present,” “ecologies,” “nuclear and other biodegradabilities,” and “environmental ethics.”

Becoming Wise

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Celia E. Deane-Drummond
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Divine Agency ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Mental Abilities

In this chapter, the author discusses some recent evidence for the appearance of what appears to be a capacity for complex relational decision-making in the human evolutionary record. Unlike compassion and latent forms of justice known as inequity aversion, finding any traces of wisdom in the lives of other animals is much harder to discern. Some debates on animal intelligence and shared intention provide clues when comparing different primates, including humans and other social animals. Using the work of twentieth-century Jewish philosophers, including Hans Jonas, consideration is given as to how far and in what sense modern humans became doubly wise, Homo sapiens sapiens. It is suggested that this is a becoming wise in community with other hominins and other species, and is determined through a discussion of the different elements of practical wisdom that has been alluded to by the ancients. The faint traces left behind in the evolutionary record show both a sporadic and sometimes inconsistent pattern of distinctively human mental abilities, particularly those related to those elements of practical wisdom that in classic Thomistic thought were recognized as foresight (providentia) and memory (memoria). How far and in what sense such a process also aligned with a receptivity to the divine is difficult to judge, though it seems likely that humans reached a level of fairly sophisticated and consistent wisdom before they became conscious of divine agency. Wisdom, as an intellectual virtue of speculative reason, first required the imaginative capacity to speculate, but that capacity did not emerge in isolation, but in community with other species.

scholarly journals The Ethics of Survival: Responsibility and Sacrifice in Environmental Ethics

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Safit
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Species Extinction ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Moral Response ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Individual

The primary concern of environmental ethics pushed to the limit is the question of survival. An ethic of survival would concern the possibility of morality in an environmental crisis that promises humanity immeasurable damage, suffering, and even the possibility of species extinction. A phenomenological analysis of the question of moral response to such future catastrophe reveals—in Heideggerian fashion contra-Heidegger—that the very question positions us in a relation of responsibility towards a world and a humanity that lies beyond one’s reach and extends into the future. Responsibility, then, arises as a constituting element that defines humanity and therefore cannot be bracketed away or suspended in a time of crisis. Through a reading of Hans Jonas’ notion of responsibility and a critique of some major notions of Environmental Ethics, this article argues that an ethic of survival is conditioned by the survival of humanity as a moral, responsible species. The main challenge of this responsibility is further suggested to be the clash between the autonomy and dignity of the individual and the vital needs of the larger community in the struggle for survival. 

Versions of Immobility: The Contemporary American Writer and the Jewish Tradition

1966 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 78-98
Author(s):  
Jonathan Raban
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Saul Bellow ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Bernard Malamud ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Urban Problems

The “Jewishness” of recent American fiction has already been well explored. But discussion of the work of Jewish writers tends to be retrospective: it leads back to the shtetl and the shlemiel without considering how “Americanised” Jewish forms and themes have become. Clearly, recent authors such as Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow are indebted to a fund of “Jewish experience”. But their novels are “American”, far more concerned with twentieth-century urban problems than with the enclosed life of the traditional Jewish community. This essay therefore attempts to assess how far “Jewish” localised material has been translated into specifically “American” terms.

scholarly journals Fighting Judaism in Soviet Ukraine in the years of the NEP

2000 ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
O. V. Kozerod
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of

Questions of the history of the struggle against the Jewish national tradition were considered in many works of the Soviet authors of the 20-ies of the twentieth century. Among them, first of all, are those who studied various problems of the theory and practice of anti-religious propaganda in Soviet Ukraine, the history of the development of atheism. This is a monograph by Boris Zavadovsky "Moses or Darwin" and M. Sheynman "On Rabbis and Synagogues". In the late 20's and early 1930's, collections entitled "Antireligiozer Lerwukh", "Komsomolisha Agada" appeared, in which issues of the history of Judaism were considered, its main sources, criticism of its main elements from the point of view of materialistic approaches was carried out. One of the main tasks formulated by the authors of these studies was the opposition of the Jewish tradition to the new communist ideology, the hegemony of which at that time was an important part of the realities of the sociopolitical life of Ukraine.

Defending Hans Jonas’ Environmental Ethics

2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Cornelius Schmidt ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Hans Jonas

scholarly journals Chiavi di lettura per la Bioetica dell’Ambiente

2010 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenza Mele
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Sono State ◽  
Sulla Base ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Ethics Of Responsibility

L’autrice è partita dall’analisi sulle origini storiche della Bioetica dell’ambiente, che sono state trattate nella rivista Medicina e Morale all’inizio degli anni ’90. In quel periodo le diverse prospettive dell’etica ambientale erano classificate come antropocentriche o anti-antropocentriche. Sulla base dei lavori pubblicati su Medicina e Morale durante questi anni, ella ha scelto di analizzare alcune prospettive filosofiche che possono essere definite per alcuni aspetti antropocentriche e per alcuni altri anti-antropocentriche, quali ad esempio l’etica della responsabilità di Hans Jonas, l’etica ambientale cattolica e l’ecofemminismo. ---------- The Author started from the origins of environmental bioethics, which were dealt in Medicine and Moral review at the beginning of the 90’s. In that period, environmental ethics perspectives were described just as anthropocentric or antianthropocentric. Following the publications of articles in Medicine and Moral during these years, she choose to dwell on some ecophilosophical perspectives, which can be defined for some aspects anthropocentric and for some others antiantropocentric, such as the ethics of responsibility of Hans Jonas, the catholic environmental ethics and the ecofeminism.

scholarly journals Vulnerabilidad, reconocimiento mutuo y ética ambiental

Bioderecho.es ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Aparicio Payá
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Mutual Recognition ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intrinsic Vulnerability ◽  
Ethical Approach ◽  
Ecological Vulnerability ◽  
Environmental Damages

En este trabajo exploramos la relevancia que, para la ética discursiva, posee la categoría de reconocimiento mutuo en el ámbito de una ética del medioambiente. Partimos de la intrínseca vulnerabilidad que caracteriza a los seres humanos, agravada en la era del Antropoceno por la vulnerabilidad ecológica, consecuencia de los daños medioambientales provocados por la acción humana. Después de una breve presentación de la noción de reconocimiento recíproco propuesta por este enfoque ético (Apel, Habermas, Cortina), analizamos la conexión de esta noción con los principios de no maleficencia y de responsabilidad de la ética medioambiental. In this work we explore the relevance that, for discursive ethics, has the category of mutual recognition in the field of environmental ethics. We start from the intrinsic vulnerability that characterizes human beings, aggravated in the era of the Anthropocene by the ecological vulnerability, consequence of environmental damages caused by human action. After a brief presentation of the notion of reciprocal recognition proposed by this ethical approach (Apel, Habermas, Cortina), we analyze the connection of this notion with the principles of non-maleficence and responsibility of environmental ethics

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