The Ethics of Hans Jonas against (Marxist) Utopia

Although today we are familiar with the ethics of Hans Jonas, which he expounded in The Imperative of Responsibility, we have completely left behind the political implications of his thinking. Yet, immediately in his preface he writes: “The  global dynamics of technological progress contains within itself an inherent tendency toward, if not an explicit program for, utopianism. And in combination with technology, Marxism, one of the ethical systems with a view of a global future that already exists, has precisely raised utopia to the status of an explicit goal.” This requires a detailed critique of the utopian ideal of Marx and Ernst Bloch. This study aims to show that such a critique is problematic, precisely because it seems to be based on Heidegger’s concept of technology, even though it is his ontology of life that is central.