German - Philosopher | May 10, 1903 - February 5, 1993
Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.
Hans Jonas
LifeGenuineHumanHuman LifeAct
Responsibility has become the fundamental imperative in modern civilization, and it should be an unavoidable criterion to assess and evaluate human actions, including, in a special way, development activities.
ResponsibilityCivilizationBecome
The latest revelation - from no Mount Sinai, Sermon on the Mount or Bo tree - is the outcry of mute things themselves that we must heed by curbing our powers over creation, lest we perish together on a wasteland of what that creation once was.
TreeTogetherCreationOverThings
That nature does not care, one way or the other, is the true abyss. That only man cares, in his finitude facing nothing but death, alone with his contingency and the objective meaninglessness of his projecting meanings, is a truly unprecedented situation.
NatureAloneDeathManCareTrue
It was once religion which told us that we are all sinners because of original sin. It is now the ecology of our planet which pronounces us all to be sinners because of the excessive exploits of human inventiveness.
ReligionSinNowHumanPlanetUs
It was once religion which threatened us with a last judgment at the end of days. It is now our tortured planet which predicts the arrival of such a day without any heavenly intervention.
DayReligionEndNowJudgmentDays
Never must the existence or the essence of man as a whole be made a stake in the hazards of action.
ManActionNeverExistenceEssence
To me, it was a sad fate to have been born into a period and a world where everything was in tip-top order, and the only real excitement was to be found in history books and occasionally also in the paper.
SadHistoryMeWorldFateBorn
Being, in the testimony it gives of itself, informs us not only about what it is but also about what we owe it.
BeingUsOnlyTestimonyOweAbout
Only a completely unintelligible God can be said to be absolutely good and absolutely powerful yet tolerate the world as it is.
GoodGodWorldPowerfulSaidOnly
Modern theory is about objects lower than man; even stars, being common things, are lower than man.
StarsManTheoryThingsModernEven
For a scientific theory of him to be possible, man, including his habits of valuation, has to be taken as determined by causal laws, as an instance and part of nature.
NatureManPossibleHimDetermined
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