Hans Jonas' "The Phenomenon of Life"

In this session, Tim Jackson and I discuss Hans Jonas’ book The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. We focus in particular on two chapters, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism” and “Is God a Mathematician?”

Our aim was to explore how Jonas, emerging from an existential–phenomenological and religious–philosophical context, offered both criticisms and appreciations of Darwin’s ideas, and how his reading aligns or conflicts with more nuanced approaches in contemporary biology.

Background and Context: Jonas’s Project and Our Motivations

I began by introducing Jonas’ unique intellectual background. Jonas studied under Martin Heidegger in the 1920s, having initially hoped to study with Edmund Husserl. Jonas was forced to flee Germany in the early 1930s in response to the rise of Nazism. He eventually joined the British forces in World War II, fighting against the Nazis, then later participated in the events surrounding the founding of Israel. This harrowing personal history shaped Jonas’ sense of moral urgency, infusing his philosophical work with a passionate interest in ethics, existential meaning, and the metaphysical underpinnings of scientific views—especially Darwinism. His earlier scholarship on Gnosticism influenced his claims that modern materialist science risked lapsing into a form of nihilism uncannily reminiscent of Gnostic cosmologies.

By situating Jonas in this intellectual and historical matrix, I wanted to emphasize that The Phenomenon of Life is less a work of straightforward philosophy of science. Rather, it is an “existential interpretation of biological facts,” as Jonas puts it in his preface, using a Heideggerian lens to read evolutionary theory and modern mechanistic science in light of broader religious–philosophical concerns. Jonas’ major preoccupation is how Darwin’s proposals—and, more broadly, mechanistic materialism—were received by culture at large, becoming entangled with nihilist or purely reductionistic views of nature. Modern scientific materialism, Jonas claimed, diminishes or eliminates purpose, interiority, and freedom in the organic realm.

Throughout our dialogue, Tim and I recognized that Jonas’ reading of Darwinism often differs significantly from Darwin’s own nuanced statements. Our motivation, then, was partly to clarify where Jonas’s approach caricatures Darwin, conflating Darwin’s original texts with the more rigid “neo-Darwinian” trends of the mid-twentieth century. Meanwhile, Tim, as a practicing biologist, expressed concern that Jonas’ depiction of Darwin as purely mechanical and anti-teleological overlooks Darwin’s more processual, open-ended, and in important ways teleological reflections.

Jonas’s Reading of Darwin: Existential Phenomenology Meets Biology

Jonas’s Phenomenon of Life contains two chapters central to our discussion. The first, “Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism,” critiques how Darwinism supposedly subjugates all life to mechanistic explanations. Jonas contends that Darwin (and, more precisely, Darwinism’s cultural reception) eliminates teleology altogether by attributing all organic form to the haphazard generation of variations and the “negative” selection that merely eliminates maladapted forms. As Jonas frames it:

“[Natural Selection] is a negative substitute for teleology. It accounts for the disappearance only, and not for the emergence of forms. It suppresses and does not create. Thus it replaces teleology as a directing principle only on condition that it is offered the suitable material to select from.”

Tim and I both remarked that Jonas’ language here—referring to new variations as “freaks” or “aberrations” and describing selection as a purely external winnower—echoes the mid-century “modern synthesis” or “neo-Darwinian” line rather than Darwin’s own more fertile and open-ended accounts. Jonas appears to criticize Darwin for diminishing the organism’s agency, describing evolution as a product of blind, implacable environmental demands shaping random mutations. I noted again that Jonas, as an existential–phenomenological thinker, is worried less about Darwin’s precise biology and more about the broader metaphysical chill he sees in modern culture: an environment in which humanity, stripped of inherent purpose, lapses into a nihilistic mode reminiscent of Gnostic alienation.

Tim’s Critique: Salvaging Darwin from Misreadings

Tim took care to point out that Jonas’ reliance on the “received view” of Darwinism omits crucial details of Darwin’s Origin of Species and later writings. Darwin himself, Tim stressed, was not a systematic philosopher, nor was he a “mechanist” in the strict sense. Rather, Darwin studied variation in nature in enormous empirical detail, highlighting individual differences, organismic behaviors, and the capacity of living beings to shape their own evolutionary trajectories. He recognized, for instance, that organisms do not merely submit passively to a stable, imposing environment. The environment, in Darwin’s eyes, is largely comprised of other organisms who bring their own purposes—hunting, mating, feeding preferences—into the interplay of natural selection.

In effect, Darwin’s “environment” is hardly a blind external force. It is shot through with purposeful activity at the level of many species interacting, and with emergent forms of adaptation. As Tim put it: “What is the environment for Darwin? Mostly other organisms. They have their own desires, drives, and preferences. That is hardly a pure mechanism.”

Tim further explained how Darwin allowed for something akin to “immanent teleology.” Though Darwin did not use the term “teleology” explicitly in a robust, Aristotelian sense, he spoke of the purposeful activities of animals—preferences in feeding, strategies in predation, mate choice—that fundamentally shape how selection operates. Additionally, Darwin, prior to Mendelian genetics, was relatively open-minded about variation’s sources, invoking the inheritance of acquired characteristics and use–disuse patterns. Tim agreed with me that some of these ideas display a more Lamarckian flavor, showing that Darwin was hardly the staunch mechanist that later neo-Darwinists or gene-centric theorists made him out to be. Jonas, perhaps understandably, conflates Darwin with that narrower, mid-twentieth-century version of evolutionary theory that indeed subordinates organismic creativity to random mutation plus external winnowing.

Teleology, Variation, and Emergent Form

Our conversation repeatedly circled back to teleology. Jonas’ core accusation is that Darwin, as typically interpreted, banishes any final cause or immanent teleology from organic life. Instead, all new forms are “accidents” due to undirected variation that are then tested and selected by external environmental filters. I described how Darwin inherited the “design paradigm” from his former teacher, the natural theologian William Paley. Rather than God being the designer, that role is given to Nature by Darwin (the source of form being the environment rather than God). Tim seemed to agree that Darwin does at least emphasize external sources of form, even if he also acknowledges the organism’s own behavior as active in its own evolution.

Tim pointed out that, for Darwin, variation itself is an expression of organismic agency and plasticity, not simply random. I mentioned the spherical shapes of micelles and the appearance of certain mathematical patterns—like the “phi ratio” in phyllotaxis—as cases of “order for free” that might be subsequently subject to selection. Tim then suggested that, if one generalizes Darwin’s principle in line with thinkers like Charles Sanders Peirce or Alfred North Whitehead, natural selection can be extended beyond biology to show how constraint and self-organization interact with selection-like processes even in physics and chemistry. Understood in this broader way, variation and selection become part of a generative schema of immanent form-production, not just a set of blind mechanics that weed out unfit mutations.

Misconceptions of Mechanism and the Legacy of Cartesian Dualism

For Jonas, Cartesian dualism and the mechanical philosophy underpin a conception of matter as mere extended substance—lifeless and purposeless—and a conception of mind as wholly removed from nature. Darwin’s demonstration that humanity evolved from animal forebears did, Jonas concedes, overthrow one bulwark of dualism. Yet Jonas contends that Darwinian biology remains mired in a mechanistic worldview, failing to account for genuine interiority and teleology.

Tim and I emphasized the partial truth in Jonas’s analysis: historically, many biologists, craving the prestige of physics (“physics envy”), indeed tried to reduce living phenomena to clockwork processes or gene-based instructions. However, Darwin himself took a less reductionistic approach. Darwin was not imposing a precise blueprint upon nature but describing how purposive behaviors, preferences, and local constraints yield emergent patterns of speciation.

Rediscovering an Immanent Teleology and Broader Philosophical Resonances

I touched on how Aristotle had conceived an immanent teleology, where living forms develop from within by virtue of an entelechy driving their internal processes. Jonas, for his part, yearned to reassert some version of this Aristotelian perspective without reverting to classical hylomorphism or dogmatic essentialism. My sense is that Jonas, caught up in the existential crisis of late modernity, saw an urgent need to restore purpose, value, and inwardness to a world threatened by nihilism. His own approach was an attempt to bridge Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger with contemporary biology, albeit sometimes at the cost of unfairly flattening Darwin into the foil of a “materialist threat.”

Meanwhile, Tim reminded me that a close reading of Darwin reveals abundant room for the organism to direct its own evolution. Darwin wrote extensively on animal behaviors, local adaptations, and reciprocal relationships that speak to co-creation, not a fixed environment imposing design by negation. Modern complexity theorists have taken these insights further, highlighting how variation and selection act alongside emergent order, morphological constraints, and even convergent evolutionary trends.

Concluding Reflections: A Synthesis in Progress

Our dialogue underscores how Jonas’s philosophical biology and Darwin’s evolutionary vision can be mutually enriching if read carefully. Jonas offers a salutary warning: read superficially, Darwin’s ideas can indeed tip into a vision of “mindless, purposeless algorithmic” selection—a view popularized by several late-twentieth-century biologists and philosophers (eg, Dennett, Dawkins). This reading justifies the cultural impression of Darwinism as an acid dissolving any notion of cosmic meaning. Yet Darwin’s own texts, especially when read in the context of thinkers like Whitehead or Peirce, open onto the possibility that teleology is not an external imposition but a creative principle intrinsic to living organisms, thus at least affirming many teloi if not a Grand Telos.

If Jonas sometimes glossed over scientific nuances, it may reflect his deeper existential concerns. He sought a new cosmological narrative that locates intrinsic value and interiority in nature, and that calls human beings to become morally responsible for Life, thus pushing back against the neo-Gnostic sense of cosmic alienation and the Nietzschean celebration of an amoral will to power. Darwin, ironically, can aid this quest if we appreciate his rich references to the agency of organisms, their mutual influences, and his resolute rejection of fixed essences.

From my vantage, modernity is not the “adulthood” of humanity so much as its “adolescence.” In earlier European history—during the ancient and medieval periods—humanity still drew upon a transcendent source of meaning and value. The break from that source in modern times, however necessary for our maturation, has unleashed a rebellious, adolescent phase: technology, for instance, has amplified our capacity for violence even as it distances us emotionally from its consequences.

I believe our current task is to move past this tumultuous adolescent stage and into a genuine adulthood. That means recovering what was vital in ancient thought—its sense of higher purpose—while integrating it with the epochal breakthroughs of modern science. The goal, as I see it, is to recognize that our humanity is not fixed but “in the making,” perpetually unfolding. At the same time, we need a sense of moral or spiritual allurement, cosmic sources of significance that can guide us through our evolutionary adventure, so that we are not simply falling through empty space, as Nietzsche’s image of modern dislocation suggests. These lures must be real enough to anchor our values without descending into dogma or rigid “preformations.”

Historically, liberals have sometimes treated moral progress as a given, reducing values to mere common sense preferences. That leaves us unprepared for surging political movements that shatter the veneer of consensus. We can reclaim the metaphysical foundations that once supported moral ideals, but only on the far side of the existential confrontation with nihilism. The renewal of cosmic meaning requires going through disenchantment, not regressing to the pre-scientific security of childhood innocence. The “adulthood” I envision involves finding a balance between openness to novelty and discovery, and a deeper transpersonal (that is, personal plus) anchor that overarches the fragmenting pressures of personal preference. It is a daunting project, but I hope that dialogues like these help us chart the path forward.

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