Ecology and Pedagogy: on the educational implications of postwar environmental philosophy

Transcription

1 Policy Futures in Education Volume 8 Numbers 3 & Ecology and Pedagogy: on the educational implications of postwar environmental philosophy YOTAM HOTAM Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel ABSTRACT Environmentalism, an ethical imperative to preserve and protect nature, has become in the last decade a central ethical, political and pedagogic theme. Against this background, this article focuses on the postwar philosophy of the German-Jewish scholar Hans Jonas ( ). It points to Jonas s radical theory of pedagogic responsibility, and to the manner in which this theory advocated conciliation between ecocentric and anthropocentric ecological approaches. The article further shows how this theory was informed by Jonas s theological reflections on a God who is concurrently transcendent and immanent a God who is both exiled from the world and at home within the world. Jonas s specific approach demonstrates the manner in which theology informs ecopedagogy; ecological education is thus demonstrated as secular-theological phenomena. All this holds on the assumption made here that we live in an apocalyptic situation, that is, under the threat of a universal catastrophe if we let things take their present course. (Jonas, [1979], 1984a, p. 140) Environmentalism, an ethical imperative to preserve and protect nature, has become in the last decade a central ethical and political theme. A rising attention to humankind s responsibility over nature, environmentalism echoes today s dreads of global warming and its catastrophic ecological implications. These current, postmodern, environmental apprehensions contend that nature has to be shielded from modern technological and industrial destructive progress; they oppose to the modernist approach that contended that nature is to be exploited for the benefit of humankind. At the same time, one can say that in contemporary environmental fears, Annihilation as a fundamental component of postwar memory culture is transformed into anxiety vis-à-vis Ecocide, meaning an ecological catastrophe that signifies the end of human civilization. In pedagogy, the growing environmental impulse is reflected by the promotion of environmental studies in educational curriculums of schools around the world, or simply by the fact that in today s schooling, being Green is In. Yet, such an educational fashion espouses the new environmental trend as such, with very little critique or scrutiny. In being a pedagogic trend devoid of critical discourse, eco-pedagogy is therefore incomplete (Orr, 1992, 1994; Gadotti, 2003). A study of the historical and intellectual origins of environmentalism, conversely, can introduce critical thoughts concerning the new ecological trend, and is therefore of significant pedagogic value. In focusing on the postwar biological philosophy of the German-Jewish scholar Hans Jonas ( ), this article presents such an intellectual-historical study. Jonas was one of Heidegger s prominent students in the 1920s, who presented a pivotal study of the Gnostic theology of late 478

2 Ecology and Pedagogy antiquity. At the same time, like many of his German-Jewish contemporaries, such as Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Gershom Scholem, Jonas was a devoted Zionist. In his postwar work, however, Jonas s endeavors were designed to distance himself from Heidegger, Gnosis and Zionism. These endeavors, also sprouting Jonas s reaction to the Holocaust, were mainly visible in his formulation of a new philosophy of life, that he himself characterized as a philosophy of the organic life form, and a subsequent introduction of humankind s responsibility to nature, termed by Jonas as the Imperative of Responsibility. In analyzing Jonas s seminal postwar publications, this article argues for an inner theological layer within Jonas s environmentalism which constitutes his theory of humankind s responsibility to the biosphere, for which he argued. More concretely, the article argues that a God who is transcendent and immanent concurrently a God who is both exiled from the world and is at home within the world, and thus best described as being home in exile informs Jonas s philosophy of the organic life form and his introduction of humankind s responsibility to nature. Thus, Jonas s postwar work demonstrates how theology provides the basis for environmental responsibility. This connection between environmental responsibility and theology has not been thoroughly discussed. It demonstrates the complexity of the postwar environmental trend, incorporating postmodern secular notions with theological reflections. As such, environmentalism is best characterized as a secular-theological phenomenon, as termed by the historian Amos Funkenstein (Funkenstein, 1986, pp ). The importance of Jonas s postwar work is increasingly recognized by scholars and environmentalists alike, to the point of referring to Jonas as a theoretician of European environmentalism. As Christian Wiese (2003) has pointed out, Jonas s 1979 publication, The Imperative of Responsibility, which argues for humankind s responsibility to nature, was well received and celebrated in Germany, and influenced the emerging Green party (Die Grünen) (p. 12). It is important to add that Jonas s postwar thought also interweaves secular modernity with theology, early twentieth-century intellectual heritage with postwar thought, modern philosophy and Jewish perspective and vocabulary, and post-holocaust ethics and ecological apprehensions. Jonas s work therefore may equally be recognized as standing at the crossroads of the intellectual landscape of its era. More particularly, it provides a special insight to environmental education nowadays. To the extent that critical pedagogy abandoned even the standard topics that are regularly dealt with in the framework of environmental education (Gur-Ze ev, 2007, p. 27), a study of Jonas s environmentalism enriches contemporary critical pedagogy with the new ecological perspective needed for its future development. In suggesting a persistent presence of the absent ( exiled ) God, it demonstrates how environmental education may well be seen as a specific revision of critical education s underpinning of the community of learners in the revolt against authority and law. The first section of this article demonstrates the theological grounds of Jonas s postwar philosophy of life. The following section discusses its ethical and pedagogic implications. From the Big Bang to the Biosphere How did inanimate matter come to gave rise to animated organisms? This question stood in the focal point of Jonas s philosophical writings from the 1950s onwards. Jonas s work, nonetheless, reflected not only on the emergence of the animated out of the inanimate cosmic chain of events, but also and more profoundly on the appearance of human consciousness out of the organic (and unconscious) life forms. More concretely, Jonas s work not only discussed the emergence of life out of indifferent and lifeless universal matter, but also further contested the appearance of the human spirit and its by-products (reason, science, technology) out of the organic (and unconscious) life forms. In relating to these questions, Jonas s postwar work simply sought to provide theoretical evidence for teleology in nature. To some extent, Jonas s speculations on the emergence of organic life were a reformulation of his early philosophical motivation to explore a philosophical biology. These motivations were decisively informed by Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), a post-nietzschean philosophical approach which proliferated in the early twentieth century, and which argued for the predominance of Life (Leben) over Spirit (Geist), the natural over the intellectual, experience over 479

3 Yotam Hotam reason. At the same time, Jonas s speculations were also founded on Heidegger s Being and Time, a philosophical work which Jonas regarded as that most profound and still most important manifesto of existentialist philosophy (Jonas, 2003, p. 335). For Heidegger, and thus for Jonas as well: Da-sein, too, can be considered as pure life. For the biological and physiological line of questioning, it then moves into the sphere of being which we know as the world of animals and plants. In the field, dates and statistics about the life-span of plants, animals, and human beings can be ontically ascertained. (Heidegger, 1996, p. 229) Yet, more importantly, Jonas s theoretical endeavor to reintroduce teleology into nature reflects his postwar conscious turn on all personal, political, and intellectual fronts from his early work and life. Jonas s awe of his mentor, Heidegger, his Zionist conviction, and his work on the ancient Gnostic theology (Jonas, [1934] 1954) were the very traits that characterized his early work and life. These three aspects of Jonas s life and work were decisively interconnected. Gnosis the most radical form of heresy according to the Jewish and Christian traditions was conceptualized by Jonas as a world-view comprising dualism between transcendent God and the immanent world, the hidden character of the transcendent (and alienated) God, and the consequent alienation of the human being from this world in his quest after knowledge (i.e. Gnosis) of the divine and hidden godly truth. Yet, Jonas acknowledged that his early work on Gnosis from the 1920s was no more than a realization of Heidegger s philosophy, particularly his Existential analysis with its methods of interpretation and understanding of human Dasein, in a particular historical subject-matter, in this case that of Gnosis of late Antiquity (Jonas, 2003, p. 117). At the same time, Gnosis provided, in a composite manner, the theological foundations for Jonas s Zionism, a secular revolt against the Jewish law (Hallacha) and against succumbing to diasporic existence (Hotam, 2007). Starting with the 1930s, however, Jonas simply could not forgive Heidegger, whom he formerly respected, for being a Nazi, even if for but a short while (Jonas, 2003, p. 148). This attitude symbolized Jonas s reaction towards Germany in general, following his immigration to Palestine in the early 1930s, his experience as a soldier of the Jewish Brigade in the 1940s, and especially his learning of the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis, and the particular details of the murder of his own mother in Auschwitz (Jonas, 2003, pp. 215, 221). Nonetheless, Jonas evidently distanced himself from Zionism too when, following the unresolved conflict between the emerging Jewish and Arab national movements and the Israeli declaration of independence in May 1948, he left Palestine, first to teach in Canada and later on, in the early 1950s, at the New School for Social Research in New York. Against these settings personal, emotional, political, and existential Jonas s postwar philosophy reflected a composite turn in his life and work: a turn from his early philosophical admiration of Heidegger, to a critique of his thought; from an early interest in the Gnostic theology, to postwar philosophy of the organic; from a general sense of a cultural crisis (Kulturkrise) to a specific post-holocaust consciousness; from a national Jewish conviction, to a diasporic Jewish identity. Yet, at the same time, Jonas s full-scale postwar turn also enfolded nonetheless an element of continuance, which fleshes out the dialectic complexity of his postwar turn, entailing more of a silent wish to amend the modern heritage, the Heideggerian philosophy, the Gnostic impulse and Jewish secular identity, rather than bluntly oppose them. This complexity which characterized Jonas s philosophy of the organic took its comprehensive form first in the postwar period; it culminated in his 1966 publication, The Phenomenon of Life. This publication presented and reiterated his thoughts from the 1950s and 1960s, and especially his growing interest in a new speculative philosophy of the organic form ; that is, speculations on the emergence of the animated out of the inanimate matter, and its ethical and political implications concerning human existence (Jonas, 1966, p. 4). Here, as shown particularly by its closing chapter, Jonas s work demonstrates the centrality of theology to his postwar ecological philosophy. The importance of theology in the framework of Jonas s work is reflected in its central speculative proposition. This proposition simply reflects theologically on what the astrophysicist Martin Rees (2007) has labeled as the universe s progression from Big Bang to Biospheres (p. 3), meaning from the moment of creation to the emergence of life. Jonas s (1966) central statement argues that In the beginning, for unknowable reasons, the ground of being, or the Divine, chose to give itself over to the chance and risk and endless variety of becoming (p. 275). A cosmogonic moment of creation, i.e. a Big Bang, was not unique to Jonas s work, but rather widely accepted 480

4 Ecology and Pedagogy as the standard model in the field of astrophysics (Weinberg, 1977, p. 4; Rees, 2007, pp ). Jonas merely takes on a central contemporary cosmological metaphor, to make it the cornerstone of his philosophy. For Jonas in particular, however, creation presupposes a creating force, or a creator. Thus, for him, in creation, it is God who entered the adventure of space and time (Jonas, 1966, p. 275). The question is, of course, what does it mean that God has entered the adventure of space and time? From Jonas s perspective, dualism on the one hand and monism on the other constitute the two traditional theological responses concerning this question. While in dualism world and God are disconnected in creation, traditional monism is characterized by God s continuous presence from creation onward. From a theological perspective, dualism, made of an evil world which stands over the benevolent God and against God, characterizes Gnostic theology. Monism, which involves divine providence, typifies the Judeo-Christian monotheism or, equally, a type of pantheistic immanence in which world and God are simply the same (Jonas, 1966, p. 275). Put differently, traditional theological speculations involved for Jonas either a God who is exiled from the world (Gnosis) or one who is at home in the world (monotheism) or as the world (pantheism). Jonas rejects both theological models. Neither exile nor home are for Jonas ethically desired speculations concerning the relations between God and world. Though repudiating both theological alternatives, Jonas campaigns in particular against Gnostic dualism, for whose characterization he himself was responsible in his early writings. The reason for Jonas s particular endeavor to contest Gnostic dualism lies in his contention that it provided the foundations for the modern world-view, which, according to him, collapsed into nihilism and eventually Nazism. Put differently, the modern ethical and political abyss represented by the very reality of annihilation and the image of Auschwitz is for Jonas an upshot of a Gnostic dualistic world-view, which reemerged during the threshold of modernity (Jonas, 1966, pp ). Heidegger, more than anything else, epitomized for Jonas the connection between Gnosis and modernity. According to Jonas, Heidegger s existentialism, and especially his concept of Geworfenheit ( having been thrown ) as a fundamental character of the Dasein, of the self-experience of existence, are originally Gnostic (Jonas, 1958, p. 334). From an ethical perspective, Heidegger s concept of homelessness, that is the ontological exile of the human being in the world, demonstrated further the unique ethical and political dangers that are exclusive to modern philosophy. While the ancient Gnostic mystical approach enclosed an eternal-present moment that is accessible to the human being, Heidegger s present moment, according to Jonas, is not accessible in the same way (Jonas, 1958, p. 336). Thus, differently from the Gnostic theology, in which the accessibility of the eternal-present moment to the human being ensures the preservation of ethics, in the modern Heideggerian philosophy, no present remains for genuine existence to repose in, and, consequently, humans have no norms to rely on (Jonas, 1958, p. 336). Accordingly, for Jonas, Heidegger s existentialism simply neutralized the Gnostic mystical impulse by secularizing the benevolent God. This type of secularization culminated in modern nihilism, an ultimate refusal of any system of values, in which the modern person is thrown into an antagonistic, anti-divine and therefore anti-human world, or into an indifferent one (Jonas, 1958, p. 333). Thus, Jonas saw in Heidegger s philosophy a modern and therefore dangerous adaptation of the Gnostic concept that the human being is thrown into an antagonistic, anti-divine and therefore anti-human world. For Jonas (1958), Heideggerian, modern, nihilism represents the absolute, vacuum, the really bottomless pit (p. 338). In view of that, postmodern thought merely concluded the Heideggerian, modern, tradition with the death of the absent God, meaning with a complete surrender to an exile existence within an immanent world with no reference to transcendence, which originally provided it with a home. To the extent that Jonas tied Gnosis and modernity together, he took an active part in a rigorous discussion concerning the legitimacy of the modern age, a discussion which raged in the 1950s and 1960s among prominent German scholars such as Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, Gerschom Scholem and Eric Voegelin (Hotam, 2007). Much like Voegelin s anti-modernist approach, for example, Jonas s postwar philosophy rebukes the modern approach as an upshot of Gnostic dualism which points not to the presence but rather to the absence of transcendent God from the world (Jonas, 1996, p. 70). Without metaphysical transcendence to repose in, the world is 481

5 Yotam Hotam governed by an indifferent physical immanence. Godly time becomes exclusive to the human being, but as hidden and canceled it also lies beyond the human reach. Jonas s postwar philosophy therefore rebukes the modern tradition of thought in particular, and modernity in general, as an upshot of Gnostic dualism. Nonetheless, Jonas s critique should not be regarded as anti-modern cum anti-gnostic in any simple sense. Nor is it a plain argument in favor of traditional monism which Jonas equally dismissed. Rather, Jonas s speculations aimed at amending modernity by interweaving dualism and monism together, thereby integrating contesting world-views into one theological master theory (Jonas, 1966, p. xxiii). For Jonas (1958), such a theological master theory represents a third road... one by which the dualistic rift can be avoided and yet enough of the dualistic insight retained to uphold the humanity of man (p. 340). For this purpose, Jonas presents a twofold theological speculation. On the one hand, and in order to amend monism, he asserts that in creation the world is indeed abandoned by God, to maintain the world s existence without any divine providence. Thus, Jonas (1966) argues that no uncommitted or unimpaired part [of God] remained to direct, correct, and ultimately guarantee the devious working-out of its destiny in creation (p. 275). The Big Bang entailed what Jonas termed in a later article from the 1980s Cosmogonic Logos, meaning a godly omnipotent creative reason (Jonas, 1996, pp ). Yet, at the moment of creation, t, the creating logos and created cosmos were disconnected; From that point on [ t +,[ x the worldly matter is guided by its inner (immanent) forces and physical laws, with no godly supervision. God became exiled from the world, a conclusion that could be seen as Jonas s version of Nietzsche s death of God, as well as Jonas s play on the Jewish mystical approach in which God created the world through selfdiminution ( Tzimzum ) (Wiese, 2003, p. 136). On the other hand, and in order to amend dualism, Jonas argues for a particular presence of God within the world. This godly presence is not characterized by straightforward dominance over the world (monotheism), or (ontic) unity with it (pantheism); it is also not disclosed in the form of a hidden spark exclusive to the human being (Gnosis). Rather, this presence, according to Jonas, is patently manifested in God s message encoded into the world; that is, into nature as such. More of a godly desire, hope and trust have been invested into the world, rather than a divine control and influence over it. God s message is ingrained into the world not in the form of Cosmogonic Logos, but rather in the form of Cosmogonic Eros a concept that Jonas adopted from the writings of the controversial early twentieth-century life-philosopher Ludwig Klages (Jonas, 1996, p. 172). Nature operates according to its immanent, indifferent, physical laws, and organic selfguidance. And yet, these nonetheless echo God s desire. Viewed under this approach, natural law is imprinted by godly law, but with no godly control, guidance, or authority a theological concept of godly presence devoid of divine providence. Differently put, though God as a creating logos is detached from the world, the godly Eros still acts in the world through the unconscious drift of immanence (Jonas, 1966, p. 277). It is in this specific sense that Jonas s God is not only exiled from the world, but concurrently at home within the world. Jonas s new concept of divinity is therefore best described as at home in exile. In this theological model, Jonas simply fixed the presence of transcendence within the world, or of transcendence within immanence a combination which reflects also Jonas s specific postwar reworking of Heidegger s philosophy. One noteworthy outcome of this complexity is that the duality between transcendent-time and world-time, though maintained, is also restrained or delimited within the world. More particularly, in terms of time, the new godly time represents a layer of temporality (within the world) with no temporal depth (of the world). It is, in this sense, a flat layer of time. For Jonas, being in touch with this godly flat time, involves what he in following Carl Schmitt labels a moment of decision... when our whole being is involved, we feel as if acting under the eyes of eternity (Jonas, 1966, pp ). Interestingly, within the concept of a moment of decision, Jonas consciously connects Heidegger s concept of moment, Carl Schmitt s decisionism and the Jewish religious tradition of Yom Kippur, in which the human being stands before divine judgment with the fear of the last moment granted of time and the hope to enter the book of life. Moreover, a significant parallel outcome of Jonas s theological model is that a divinity, which has no control over the world, can not be regarded as omnipotent in the fullest sense of the word. Indeed, Jonas argues in his famous 1982 lecture, Der Gottesbegriff nach Auschwitz (1984b), that his new concept of God refers to a non omnipotent God. It is a type of 482

6 Ecology and Pedagogy transcendent power which is present in the world not in monotheistic notions of commandment and providence, but rather in existential terms of openness and care. This deity, according to Jonas (1984b), did not prevent Auschwitz not because he did not want to, but because he could not (p. 15). The godly inability to prevent Auschwitz demonstrates Jonas s particular understanding of the presence of the absent God a notion that stood at the focal point of Adorno s and Horkheimer s postwar notions of Negative-Utopia as well (Gur-Ze ev, 2007, p. 19). Such a concept fleshes out Jonas s anti-utopian approach, in which an entity who is at home in exile can neither save nor redeem the humankind (Jonas, 1984b, pp ). Even so, it should be noted that Jonas s concept of a numinous entity which is at home in exile detached from the world and ingrained into it at the same time is a paradox union of oppositions, characteristic of the mystical tradition of thought. For how can some entity be detached from the world and ingrained into it concurrently? Jonas s secular anti-utopian thought could be regarded in a play on Max Weber s concept of secularization as disenchantment of the world as an opposite reenchantment, i.e. mystification of the world. Jonas s secularization ends with re-mystification. From Theology to Pedagogy: organism, responsibility, and ethics For Jonas, the home in exile mode of godly presence within the world is the transcendent horizon within the immanent nature (Jonas, 1966, p. 84). With this conjecture, Jonas provided the theoretical basis for his speculations, as much on the emergence as on the essence of the organic life form. Simply put, Jonas s theological speculations provided the foundations for his philosophy of the organic. Organic life, according to Jonas, emerged merely because the inanimate matter was already pregnant with animate (godly) potential. The organic life form, in turn, reflects the transcendent horizon within the immanent nature, in its openness toward the world in a peculiar relatedness of dependence and possibility. For Jonas (1966), the self-transcendence of life in having a world, with all its promise of higher and more comprehensive stages, springs from the primary antinomy of freedom and necessity inherent in organism as such (p. 84). The presence of transcendence within immanence bears on the supreme concern of organism with its own being and continuation in being (p. 84). This is indeed the self transcendence of life as entertaining a horizon, or horizons, beyond its point-identity (p. 84). The environment in which life subsists is such a horizon or horizons in spatial terms. Inner imminence, meaning the venture of the organism to realize its potential purpose in the course of time, provides, according to Jonas, the horizon in terms of future temporality (p. 85). These speculations regarding the essence and the emergence of life endow Jonas s philosophy with its closing remarks concerning the appearance of the human being. As Jonas argues in his (1979) publication The Imperative of Responsibility, the human being is the last coil in the progression from the big bang to the biosphere, from inanimate matter to the animate organism. Like any other creature of the world, human beings, by merely fulfilling themselves in pursuit of their lives, vindicate the divine venture (Jonas, 1979, 1984a, p. 238). Thus, the presence of the godly message encoded within the organic world is patent in the human being as part of nature. This conclusion directs Jonas to ethics, or to what he termed the transcendent importance of our deeds. As an organic life form (i.e. as part of nature) the human being encloses an inner transcendent, herewith godly, ethical purpose, to be fulfilled spatially and temporally by humans own doings. Thus, for Jonas, The advent of man means the advent of knowledge and freedom, and with this supremely double-edged gift the innocence of the mere subject of selffulfilling life has given way to the charge of responsibility under the disjunction of good and evil. In ethical terms, therefore, the human s vocation lies in responsibility to nature, since in human action God s own destiny, his doing or undoing, is at stake (Jonas, 1984a, p. 274) In the same vein, Jonas concludes that through his [human s] spirit, God can, as it were, win back power, while he can also fail because of human failure. For Jonas, the human spirit is evidence it attests that there is an outer-worldly within worldly drives (Jonas, 2003, p. 347). Human inherent faculty to hear, that is realize the godly message (i.e. the godly law ) echoed in the world, demonstrates, according to Jonas, humankind s fate. In this way, not through the revolt against godly law, but rather through the acceptance thereof, albeit in a secular and thus concealed makeup, is Jonas s own message ingrained into his ethics of responsibility to nature. To some extent, a secular transfiguration of the 483

7 Yotam Hotam biblical myth of Eden is reflected in Jonas s ethics: the human being is responsible for all creation, not as a result of the divine direct order, but rather as an echo of the present trust in an absent divinity. Supported by these theological speculations, Jonas constructs the human ethical imperative of responsibility: Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life; or expressed negatively: act so that the effects of your actions are not destructive of the future possibility of such life (Jonas, 1979, p. 11). It is important to note that since the concept of a God that is not omnipotent, who is at home in exile, was anti-utopian, the ethic we are looking for is not eschatological and anti-utopian (Jonas, 1984a, p. 17). For Jonas, such an anti-utopian ethical code of responsibility is required in the wake of a technological world, and the potential of a suicidal atomic holocaust that made the human being dangerous not only to himself but to the whole biosphere (p. 136). At the focal point of Jonas s apprehensions stands the ecological disaster which is bound to come by the logic of present trends that positively forge ahead towards it, whereas a nuclear one is only a terrible contingency which may or may not happen (p. 202). Nonetheless, both catastrophic potentials of annihilation call for solidarity of interest with the organic world, meaning: overcoming humankind s hazardous and destructive existence by each human s own ethical responsibility. The prospect of ecological catastrophe calls for responsibility on the part of every human to nature. Yet, it should be noted that in laying the burden of ethical responsibility for nature on the shoulders of humankind, Jonas expresses an admixture of ecocentric and anthropocentric environmentalism ; that is, an environmentalism which lays emphasis on the intrinsic value of nature, and yet nonetheless relies on humankind s peculiarity and prominence. In the choice between man and nature it is man who, according to Jonas, indeed comes first (Jonas, 1984a, p. 137). Consequently, not the resignation from technology and power, but rather a sensible deployment of their potential by a future degree of power itself, not by a quietist renunciation of power... power over power, characterizes Jonas s imperative of responsibility (Jonas, 1984a, pp. 134, 141). In this approach, the human being takes over the vacuum left by God. However, in contrast to neo-conservative thinkers such as Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin for whom the modern-secular substitution of divine providence with human active influence concludes with nihilism (totalitarian or liberal) (Emberley & Cooper, 2004) in maintaining that nature s pregnancy with the godly message delivered the human spirit, Jonas s exchange between God and humans inversely ends with an ethics of responsibility. Modernity can thus be amended. Equally, Jonas s environmental approach is not characterized by a radical anti-technological revolt which seems to typify different ecocentric and deep ecological activists and anti-globalists today. Rather, it embodies a responsible empowerment of technology. Such an amendment of the modern-secular world should not be regarded as representing an eclipse of memory regarding annihilation. Rather, it demonstrates how memories of the modern calamitous outcome in the past are converted into visions of its potential for the future. In caring for the environment, Jonas s ethical theory of responsibility points not to a formal responsibility of a person over his own actions. Rather, it is a type of substantive responsibility, based on the person s care towards other (objects or subjects), or an obligation for it, or to it. Jonas labels this concept of responsibility a positive duty of power (Jonas, 1984a, pp ). Based on care for an other with whom the caring person has natural intimate relations, Jonas s positive duty of power is exemplified by a parent child vertical pedagogic relation (Jonas, 1984a, pp ). It is at this point that Jonas turns from philosophy to pedagogy. Jonas understands all that which falls under education in the broadest sense under such parent child pedagogic relation (Jonas, 1984a, p. 101). A parental positive duty of power is for Jonas a natural form of responsibility, meaning it is there to begin with, and underlies the object s sovereign claim on it (Jonas, 1984a, p. 95). In Jonas s terminology, a natural form of responsibility stands over and against political responsibility, which is a contract or a posteriori control. Nonetheless, since Jonas argues that educational responsibility cannot help taking the form of political responsibility, even in its most private mode, he concludes that the sphere of education shows most clearly how parental and political responsibilities, the most private and the most public, the most intimate and the most general, overlap (Jonas, 1984a, p. 103). For Jonas, all forms 484

8 Ecology and Pedagogy of pedagogic care, therefore, denote political action. Differently put, pedagogy is political from its outset. As such, it further represents a future social and cultural interest for Jonas, who is concerned with a moral education of the human race (Jonas, 1984a, p. 103). Jonas s thoughts on the future moral education are important because they demonstrate his own interest in the pedagogic discourse. Here, Jonas s pedagogic quest resembles the critical pedagogic motivations to protest, if not to active revolt, against existing social, economic, political or cultural conditions (Freire, 1985, p. 178, 1986, pp. 1-5; McLaren, 2007, p. 30). Jonas s concerns fall, therefore, under the premises of critical pedagogy. His ecological emphasis is, however, unique. As the philosopher Ilan Gur-Ze ev (2007) has argued, Critical Pedagogy, in all its versions, did not even try to develop a serious response to the theological and philosophical challenges presented by environmental education at its best (p. 23). Moreover, critical pedagogy plunged into a positive Utopia, becoming itself more of a religion in the traditional, institutional, dogmatic, and oppressive sense (p. 24). Against this background, as the following suggests, Jonas s introduction of environmental education as an anti-utopian ethical venture in which a new liberating pedagogy is anchored represents a much needed innovation. Jonas presents care for the environment as the ethical focal point of the community of learning and parenthood as its inspiring emblem. The innovation of Jonas s concept of care lies in that it challenges critical pedagogic tacit association between the creation of an equal, free, and democratic community of learners and the rejection of autocratic, oppressive law, symbolized by the teacher students traditional education. Freire and Shor, for example, persistently emphasize this message of critical pedagogy as they understand it (Freire, 1986, pp. 1-5). For both, community revolts against authority. From a theological perspective such a communal revolt against the authoritative law could be seen as secularization of the Pauline model of a Christian community of sons united by love, whilst rejecting what Freud, Lacan, and others have labeled the law of the father (Benyamini, 2007, pp ). From the same theological perspective, Jonas s critical pedagogic impulse, conversely, is not based on an image of a pure revolt against the law of the father, in any simple sense. Rather it is founded on the human inherent faculty to hear, and herewith realize, the godly message (i.e. the law of the father ) echoed in the world. A secular acceptance of godly law in a Jewish sense is Jonas s own theological message tacitly ingrained into his pedagogy. Metaphorically put, not the Pauline visual experience on the road to Damascus, but rather the communal Jewish audible experience at the foot of Mount Sinai provides the mythological grounds of Jonas s critical pedagogy. Jonas presents, therefore, what could be labeled as a Jewish secular-theological response to critical pedagogy. As such, it is a specific type of counter-pedagogy, anchored in secular diasporic Judaism, for which exile is home (Cohen, 1972). Ethical Judaism, albeit in a post-1945 reformulation, constitutes a critical pedagogic revolt not by refuting critical pedagogy, but rather by suggesting an amendment. Conclusion For Jonas (1984a) metaphysics must underpin ethics (p. x). To the extent that for Jonas metaphysics means contemplations on the divine, and ethics stands for responsibility over the world, theology informs ecology. Thus, a concept of a God who is at home in exile provided for Jonas the basis for humankind s ethical responsibility to nature and for nature. Jonas s postwar work therefore demonstrates the subtle connections between ecology and its political, educational and ethical implications, on the one hand, and theology and its own consequence on the political and ethical world today on the other, a connection that has not yet been thoroughly discussed in the historical research. Jonas s type of secular ecological thought is consequently best described by evoking Amos Funkstein s terminology secular theological. This last point is rife with pedagogical implications. First, it certainly bears on the compound character of contemporary eco-pedagogy, demonstrating the need to further evaluate this growing impulse critically (Suoranta et al, 2008). Yet, and more profoundly, to the extent that in Jonas s secular-theological environmental approach, immanence is informed by transcendence, ethics, and consequently education, is subject to authority and the acceptance of law. The open and democratic community of learners, in this sense, is not necessarily grounded on a sheer revolt against authority, but rather on authority s prudent integration by the ethically aware individual. In 485

9 Yotam Hotam Jonas s environmentalism, the transcendent world is accessible to the human being, and can direct the human experience through the acceptance of the transcendent law. This approach resembles, for example, Rudolf Steiner s early twentieth-century anthroposophy, in which the spiritual transcendent world is accessible to the human being, and directs the human experience through inner development. Anthroposophic education today is still very much informed by Steiner s utopian spiritualism. In Jonas s case, however, the inherent openness of the individual towards transcendence should not mean a new plunge into a positive utopia, but rather a genuine refusal to acknowledge any form of utopianism. What enables Jonas s anti-utopian message is the character of the individual contact with transcendence not as a direct contact with a present divinity within the world, but with the echo of an absent one, still invested in the world. One can say that Jonas juggles here between liberal and conservative pedagogic impulses, balancing like a circus acrobat on the tight cable suspended high in the air, employing step by step all the professional knowledge at his disposal in order not to fall either side. Yet, it seams that such an act of flexible performance is crucial if one is to maintain a pedagogic approach which acknowledges political and cultural reality without succumbing to resignation. Enduring refusal or total approval of reality are its alternatives. References Benyamini, I. (2007) Paul and the Birth of the Sons Community: an investigation into the foundations of Christianity with Freud and Lacan. Tel Aviv: Resling. (In Hebrew) Cohen, H. (1972) The Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism. New York: Unger Publications. Emberley, P. & Cooper, B. (Eds) (2004) Faith and Political Philosophy: the correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Freire. P. (1985) The Politics of Education: culture, power, and liberation. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Freire, P. (1986) Pedagogy of Liberation: dialogues on transforming education. New York: Bergin & Garvey. Funkenstein, A. (1986) Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gadotti, M. (2003) Pedagogy of the Earth and the Culture of Sustainability. Lecture given at the International Conference on Life Long Citizenship Learning, Participatory Democracy & Social Change, Toronto, Canada. Gur-Ze ev, I. (2007) Beyond the Modern Postmodern Struggle in Education: toward counter-education and enduring improvisation. Rotterdam: Sense. Heidegger, M. (1996) Being and Time. New York: SUNY. Hotam, Y. (2007) Gnosis and Modernity: a postwar German intellectual debate on secularization, religion and overcoming the past, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8(3/4), Jonas, H. ([1934] 1954) Gnosis und Spätantiker Geist. Tübingen: V&R. Jonas, H. (1958) The Gnostic Religion: the message of the alien god and the beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press. Jonas, H. (1979) Das Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Jonas, H. (1966) The Phenomenon of Life: toward a philosophical biology. Evanston: Northwestern Press. Jonas, H. (1984a) The Imperative of Responsibility: in search of ethics for the technological age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jonas, H. (1984b) Der Gottestbegriff nach Auschwitz: Eine Jüdische Stimme. Munich: Suhrkamp. Jonas, H. (1996) Matter, Mind and Creation: cosmological evidence and cosmogonic speculation, in: L. Vogel (Ed.) Mortality and Morality: a search for the good after Auschwitz. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. McLaren, P. (Ed.) (2007) Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture: oppositional politics in a postmodern era. New York: Routledge. Orr, D.W. (1992) Ecological Literacy. New York: SUNY. Orr, D.W. (1994) Earth in Mind: on education, environment, and the human prospect. Washington: Island Press. Rees, M. (2007) Our Cosmic Habitat. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 486

10 Ecology and Pedagogy Suoranta, J., Houston, D., Martin, G. & McLaren, P. (2008) The Havoc of Capitalism: educating for social and environmental justice. Rotterdam: Sense. Weinberg, S. (1977) The First Three Minutes: a modern view of the origin of the universe. New York: Basic Books. Wiese, C. (2003) Zusammen philosoph und jude: Hans Jonas. Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag. YOTAM HOTAM is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, a lecturer at the Beit-Berl Academic College, and Editor of I (Hebrew) and Tabur: Yearbook for European Society, Culture and Thought (Hebrew). Correspondence: Yotam Hotam, Department of Learning, Instruction and Teacher Education, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel (msyotam@mscc.huji.ac.il). 487