care, social responsibility hans jonas, witt

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Care, Social Responsibility & Foundations

Hans Jonas, Wittgenstein & Dogen Zenji

Geoffrey Hunt BSc(Hons) MLitt PhD

Professor of Ethics & Global Policies

University of Surrey, UK.

[email protected]

Paper presented at Shizuoka National University, 21st

October 2004.

Contents

Introduction: Does Care about the Human Future need a Metaphysics, or an Orientation?

1. Hans Jonas theory and metaphysics

2. The real historical foundation of Future-Care is sufficient.

3. Wittgensteins critique of foundationalism.4. An open orientation, and catharsis.

5. Zen already provides open orientation and catharsis.

Conclusion: The Jonas Paradox

References

Introduction:Does Future-Care need a Metaphysics, or an Orientation?

Does caring about the future of humanity1a

need a metaphysics, or an orientation?

That is, does it need a rational ground, or does it need a direction, a coherent change

of assumptions? Jonas says it does need a theoretical ground:

[The] urgency of the quest for foundations: establishing them as best we can

is of practical importance already for the sake of the authority which the

prescriptions flowing from them can assert in the battle of opinions an

authority which the mere plausibility of emotional appeal of (e.g.) the

proposition We should have the future of man and the planet at heart is

insufficient to yield.1

Following Wittgenstein and Zen (particularly Dogen Kigen Zenji)

2

I challenge thisclaim that a rational (philosophical) foundation is needed, or even possible. Certainly,

an ethics of care for the future of mankind (future-ethics) is emerging from our

current historical human situation it is an intellectual-moral-emotional response to

real and felt needs of mankind, namely environmental, economic and political

insecurity. This, I maintain is the foundation of future-care ethics (FCE), and is

sufficient as a foundation. Wittgenstein in particular has shown, very convincingly,

that all attempts at creating purely rational (philosophical or metaphysical)

foundations are misconceived.

FCE does however need a fundamental orientation. An orientation (attitude,

posture, direction, indication) is not at all the same thing as a rational foundation. I

will call this orientation an open orientation, which may be achieved by individualsand groups through a cathartic practice such as a form of Zen. Ludwig

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Wittgensteins anti-philosophical work is cathartic in a related way, intellectually

cathartic because when one has really understood him one is able to let go of

philosophising in the metaphysical sense. What I would like to show (with apologies

for being too ambitious) is that 1) Wittgensteins work shows us that a FCE - like any

other endeavour does not need a rational foundation (metaphysics). 2) that FCE

does need an open and cathartic orientation, and 3) that Japanese Zen already providesthe heart of an open and cathartic practice, that has a kinship with Wittgensteins

work.

I believe that it is a pressing contemporary worldwide cultural programme to

make connections between FCE, Zen-type practices, and the anti-foundationalism of

Wittgenstein. If you prefer, it is a programme of linkage between global sustainability

policy, moral-emotional life practices of enlightenment, and intellectual clarity.

1. Hans Jonas theory and metaphysics of future-care ethics

In The Imperative of Responsibility Jonas argues that the global impact of humanactivity raises moral issues for which past ethics has left us unprepared and that a

new reflection on ethical principles is needed. Responsibility for human fate has

moved into centre of the ethical stage. Responsibility must go with our power, and

must be informed by a scientific futurology. Therefore he gives a theory of

responsibility (my underlining). Religion, which is in eclipse he says, no longer

gives us an image of man, so we need a rational theory of being, and metaphysics

must underpin ethics, so as to bridge the scientific or factual is and the moral

ought. This metaphysics will help us discriminate between legitimate and

illegitimate goal-settings to our power. Our current scientific/technological view of

the world emphatically denies us all conceptual means to think of Nature as

something to be honoured, having reduced it to the indifference of necessity and

accident, and divested it of any dignity of ends. Ethics must be pushed into the

doctrine of being, that is, metaphysics, in which all ethics must ultimately be

grounded.3

While I broadly agree with Jonas about the need to re-think ethics in terms of

future-care4, and his pubic concern is to be commended, I believe he is confused in

thinking that ethics can have, should have, or needs to have a theory of responsibility

and a grounding in metaphysics. This confusion has been typical of most Western

philosophy, and is not confined to Jonas work. I think it is particularly important

address Jonas confusion, however, because his book has been very influential in

addressing the issue of FCE but, paradoxically, suffers from some of the samesymptoms of the technocratic5

worldview that he is most concerned to criticise. So,

to complete Jonas programme requires a critique of Jonas. I will not in this essay go

into the details of Jonas rational theory and metaphysics (with its neo-Kantian and

neo-Spinozan features), but simply confine myself to challenging the very idea that

such things are necessary. If this is correct, then the detail becomes irrelevant.

Jonas does seek a new ethical perspective, and I have suggested that the

principles of public accountability (and the precautionary principle) are the ready

doctrine he is looking for.6

However, I hasten to add that public accountability

(and its eighteen aspects) is not meant as a theoretical or metaphysical foundation, let

alone a superior theory to Jonas. It is meant instead as a heuristic (educative)

framework that is meant to encourage a new way of thinking, and a new attitude, inthe face of the global problems we have at this point in history. It is these historically

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situated problems that are the foundation of the public accountability framework, and

it stands in need of no other framework or any other kind of test of its validity.

2. The real historical foundation of future-care is sufficient

Jonas work was written because it is a response to a historical set of conditions, and

it was received so well because there is a widespread need to make sense of our

current global predicament. However, this predicament is not a sign that an old

philosophical theory of responsibility needs to be replaced with a new one, or that an

old metaphysics of being needs replacing with a new one. The fact that Jonas work

has received such a positive response does not indicate that his theory is in any way

better, but only that many people sense that there is a deep human problem and also,

largely without understanding the Jonas difficult philosophical arguments, sense

that he is talking about some kind of deep (metaphysical) solution. It is very unusual

to have 200,000 copies of a professional philosophy book sold (in Germany, in this

case).In an interview Jonas was asked: Do you think that the many people who

have purchased The Imperative of Responsibility have actually read it? It is a difficult

book, after all. He answered: Read all chapters? Look, with how many books have

we done that? I know I could name a number of books which I really have read more

than once in their entirety. But there arent so many. In many even very important

books one selects one's chapters or ones passages or one's subdivisions, or dont you

do that?. Maybe the interviewer shpould have asked if the readers had understoodthe

book.7

There is no doubt that intellectual products that are involved in directing

people to the global problems of mankind in a general way are very much in demand

at present because of those problems, and the real foundations of those problems lie in

policies, regulation and policy implementation, persuasive programmes of NGOs and

other movements of civil society to frame and implement and follow up such policies

the Kyoto Protocol on global warming for example. It is existing human practices,

and human practical responses to the failing or counterproductive asepcts of those

practices, that are the true foundations of and stimulus to our intellectual products.

What can be shown, although I will not attempt it here, is that Jonas

philosophical theory and metaphysics rest on the universalising of certain

decontextualised concepts taken from our ordinary language, concepts which are the

boundary of a specific (in this case a modern Western) conception of reality, such as

responsibility, ends, values, nature. There is nothing confused about explicitlypromoting certain ideas as a call to change our reality (which is what I do with public

accountability and precaution principle), but it is wrong to suggest that

philosophers have some special rational (theoretical) technique for doing so which

gives them priority. Their proposals are simply on a level with the proposals of other

social change agents.

3. Wittgensteins critique of foundationalism (metaphysics).

In the light of what we have learned from the critique of philosophy undertaken by

Ludwig Wittgenstein we can for the sake of brevity characterise Jonas philosophicalwork as foundationalism. Foundationalism is any attempt to formulate a rational

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foundation or ground for ethics, knowledge, reality, religion, art and so on. Since Kant,

foundationalism has also taken the more tenuous form of trying rationally to

formulate the nature of the limits of our ethics, knowledge etc.8

I shall not be

concerned with the distinction between pre-Kantian and post-Kantian foundationalism.

And, I shall use the word metaphysics quite generally to refer to all the foundational

varieties of philosophising, and ignore the sometimes important differences betweenthem.

Wittgenstein still has not been well understood, even by professional

philosophers. And many philosophers continue as though Wittgensteins

revolutionary work never existed, even though it completely undermines their own

work. When one first reads his Philosophical Investigations,9

for example, one has a

strange sensation of understanding all the words and sentences (he has a simple and

lucid style), but having no idea why he is saying what he is saying, and indeed

whether he is saying anything of any importance. It seems easy to read, but it is not.

Wittgenstein himself said: What we say will be easy, but to know why we say it will

be very difficult.10

One might have the same sensation in hearing or reading the

words of an accomplished Zen teacher. Indeed, as we shall see, I believe there is akinship between Wittgensteins approach in philosophy, and the Zen approach in life.

Wittgenstein is not at all concerned with creating a theory or metaphysics but only in

showing us why it is deeply confused to create philosophical theory and metaphysics

in the way that philosophers have, and that indeed philosophical theory and

metaphysics always arise in deep conceptual (what he calls logical-grammatical)

confusion and this is in itself all that his work does. But, just as in Zen, untangling a

knot, is very transformative for human life.

Wittgenstein, in fact, was not a philosopher at all, in the traditional sense. He

explained many times that he was not himself offering a philosophical theory, for

example, a theory of the ground of our language:

We never arrive at fundamental propositions in the course of our

investigation; we get to the boundary of language which stops us from asking

further questions. We dont get to the bottom of things, but reach a point

where we can go no further, where we cannot ask further questions.11

This point is where the intellect stops, or should stop, and mere acceptance or

insight (one has to be careful in choice of words here, otherwise misunderstandings

will flourish) should arise. The problem with philosophy is that it refuses to stop, and

Jonas has refused to stop where he should have.

So what is Wittgenstein doing, what is his method? This is as hard to explainas it is hard to explain what a Zen master is doing. Is there a method at all? It has been

described as perspicuous presentation. This is about helping us to see the differences

in the use of concepts (e.g. the differences in the use of responsibility), so as to

avoid misleading generalisation. It is about getting the readers to see for themselves

that apparent philosophical profundities are often absurdities based on the misuse of

language (thought). It is about helping them to make or grasp the connections between

contexts and concepts that they had not noticed.

I would agree with Jonas that in FCE a lot of work needs to be done in

changing attitudes and helping people make connections of understanding in what is

now a complex world overlaid with complex ways of misunderstanding things by

seeking scientific or technical explanations where such explanations areunnecessary and misleading (I sometimes calls this, for brevity, explanationism).

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we take these to be in practice is already foundational i.e. questions and answers

stop there. Ethics requires no explanation, and none that people attempt to give could

possibly provide the final and ultimate explanation required, but only more cause for

argument and confusion.

4. An open orientation, and catharsis

One can readily understand that one motive a person may have for wishing to provide

a theoretical underpinning for ethics is that there is so much ethical disagreement

around. It is sometimes believed that all or most of this could be cleared up if only we

had the right theory of ethics. This appears to be what Jonas thinks (see the first

quotation above). As Johnston points out, if social and cultural fragmentation is now

manifest in deep ethical disagreements this not a problem to whose solution the

philosopher qua philosopher can make a special contribution.13

The same point

could be made about social responsibility, which is Jonas main concern. The

solution may lie, for example, in open-minded cross-cultural dialogue in which peoplemake an effort to understand other points of view, make compromises or give up

previous attitudes. It may lie in educational and religious means of enhancing social

responsibility (see below). It may lie in passive resistance. Violence too may be seen

by some as another kind of solution (mistakenly, I believe).

Caring for the human future, and taking responsibility for it, may not need a

theory or metaphysical ground, but it does need the promotion of a coherent set of

action-oriented principles (precautionary principle, public accountability) and,

furthermore, it needs a fundamental intellectual-moral-emotional orientation. The

orientation (attitude, posture, direction, indication) of the coming age, if we are to

survive, is to be an open orientation. This is an orientation which is:

Intellectual: a letting go of explanations and theories where they are inappropriate

(pushed beyond the boundaries of sense)

Moral: a letting go of attachment (clinging) to moral, political and religious

ideologies

Emotional: a letting go of the bodily-emotional sources of attachment.

This letting go, which I call catharsis, results in an openness of mind and spirit, the

kind of openness that will go hand in hand with the FCE that Jonas hopes for. A

central feature of an ethical stance on the policies needed to deal with our

contemporary global problems is a non-dogmatism, a non-moralising approach, anon-attachment to boundaries and divisions, and an appreciation of when it is entirely

appropriate to stop explaining and theorising and get back to persuasion, resistance

and action.

This open orientation is to be found in several different forms in world-

historical cultures. The two I wish to draw attention to here are Zen practice in

relation to the moral-emotional dimension and Wittgensteins critique of philosophy

(perspicuous presentation) in relation to the intellectual dimension. As someone who

was trained in Wittgensteins philosophy (and taught by Rush Rhees, and

Wittgensteinians at Swansea University), as well as now being involved in efforts to

Westernise Zen practice (what I call Modern Zen), I find it illuminating to show

the kinship between Zen and Wittgenstein. (There are important differences, ofcourse.)

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5. Japanese Zen already provides a cathartic life-practice

We generally think one of two things. One, we cannot change the world, so must get

what we can or simply suffer our lot in life. Two, we can change the world, and whenwe have done so our lot will then improve. There is a third way: to change yourself is

to change the world. To begin to bring peace to yourself is to begin, really begin, to

bring peace in the world. Giving up on changing the world is to fall into ignorance,

fear and despair. Trying to change the world without self-change is unskilful, fruitless

and at worst harmful.

Wittgenstein recognised that the edifice of your pride has to be dismantled.

And that is terribly hard work.14

This was not an incidental matter for Wittgenstein,

for he thinks pride, or perhaps arrogance, somehow lies behind the metaphysical

theorising of philosophers. It is pride that gets in the way of understanding so often,

not a lack of intelligence or cleverness. This, of course, is a central insight of Zen, and

indeed all Buddhism.What is the connection between Zen (meditation) and social responsibility?

Meditation is the sustained practice of cultivating awareness and concentration in

order to see for oneself that the boundary around my self (what makes me me) is

an awkward and temporary construction. To have a human identity, a sense of self,

means that something (I, me, mine) is separate from everything and everyone else).

As this boundary serves to maintain my sense of identity, at the very same time it

necessarily obstructs the continuity or interdependence between me and everyone

else (and everything else); it obstructs the truth that I am of the world, and the world

is of me. (To illustrate the point simply: When I am completely absorbed in watching

or doing something fascinating then the boundary appears to disappear, or dissolve, or

at least become very thin and wispy. When I love someone, there is the same

weakening or disappearance of the boundary, a self-sacrificing.

Becoming human, becoming a distinct person, becoming whoever one is, is a

lifetime of constructing, protecting, strengthening and adjusting this boundary. In

sustained meditation we are undoing a lifetime of self-construction, and letting go of

the boundary. This does not mean that after sustained meditation one has permanently

and completely lost the boundary. It means that when one returns to the boundary (to

the me that I am) it is with a changed attitude. One has changed oneself. One sees

that there is no solid wall between oneself and others (and other things) but only a veil

that has spun oneself, in a social context of veils, over the years of ones reaching

maturity. With this changed attitude one sees that other people are a lot more likeoneself, and a lot more like each other, than they are different. The veil is arranged

differently from one to another, thats all.

To use another metaphor: pour water into a bowl, bucket, vase, pot, and

saucepan. Are they the same or different? The boundary around the water is different,

but the water is always just that water. I had been so focussed on the boundary-thing

around the water, that I overlooked the water itself. Water has no boundary it settles

within a boundary and takes its shape. In itself it has no shape no left, right, up,

down, before, after. I know that being toldthis is not very convincing its rather

abstract. (And there is a danger of taking it literally, and thinking there is a soul

inside the body like water in a pot, etc.) Through meditation one may see the truth of

it, and seeing this truth changes ones life. It changes ones attitude to oneself, to

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others and to everything (to the world). I see you in me and me in you, I see

everything in me and me in everything, you in everything and everything in you.

Social responsibilityis accepting as ones own the difficult experiences of

other human beings, difficulties largely a result of human activity itself. Nelson

Mandela was one with high degree of social responsibility, and so was Mahatma

Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Hans Jonas too, in his own way, was also on thispath, until he fell into the philosophical trap. No one told these people that they must

see the difficulties of others as their own they simply did so. Their self-boundary

was not so thick that it excluded others it was thin and porous, it included others.

This kind of seeing or insight may have come easily to them, but not so easily to most

of us. Not coming so easily, we suffer anxiety, in the way in which both Christ and

the Buddha saw that we all suffer. But meditation can cultivate this insight, can help

this thinning out of self-boundary.

Theres the connection. To thin out ones self boundary through meditation is

at once to see clearly that we are one. Social responsibility comes through meditation.

The insight attained through meditation is social responsibility. To let go of ones self

is to embrace others. Responsibility, then does not require attaching to the theory of aphilosopher. As Dogen Zenji expressed it:

because we cannot perceive it [truth/reality] directly, we are prone to beget

random intellectual ideas, and because we chase after these as if they were real

things, we vainly pass by the great state of truth. From these intellectual ideas

emerge all sorts of flowers in space [imaginings]..15

Social responsibility is not a theory or intellectual idea, but a personal act of letting go:

And the scale of this [realization] is the scale ofnot committing. For people of

just this reality, at the moment of just this reality wrongs can never be

committed at all. The power of not committing is realized, and so wrongs

cannot voice themselves as wrongs, and wrongs lack an established set of

tools.16

I take Dogen Zenji to be saying (and this needs more exegesis) that ethics is largely

about not doing, about not committing, and that responsibility is about letting go, not

(as so often in the West) attaching to some idea of the good or right and then trying to

impose it on everyone. Dogen Zenji is clear about this:

there has never been any kind of right that is realized beforehand and thatthen waits for someone to do it. There is none among the many kinds of right

that fails to appear at the very moment of doing right. The myriad kinds of

right have no set shape, but they converge on the place of doing right faster

than iron to a magnet17

So, as you let go, rightness starts appearing everywhere around you. Sadly, I think

the West has forgotten the meaning of its own great religious teachings. This is the

meaning of the love of which Christ speaks (caring for all humanity), and the

compassion that the Buddha and all the great teachers speak of. This is not self-

directed, gainful love, but selfless love. Can it be an accident that Christ and Buddha

both had the boundary-less insight of meditation (sometimes called contemplation in

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the Christian tradition) and both felt deep responsibility for all humankind? Of course

not.

Zen teachings explain that we human beings are naturally inclined to four

natural ways of struggling to sustain our sense of self. Unthinking ways or reactions

that mould our lives and cause anxiety and dissatisfaction, and also present obstacles

to an ethics of future-care. These are seeking praise and avoiding blame, seekingpleasure and avoiding discomfort and pain, seeking popularity and avoiding

unpopularity, and seeking gain and avoiding loss. On this basis we have a tendency to

greed (wanting more things or people), hatred (not wanting certain things or people),

and ignorance and fear (not knowing what we want, why we want them, or whether

we shall lose them.) Preoccupied in this way, we can have little care or compassion or

responsibility for others.

The fundamental human anxiety, which is the Buddhas starting point, is not

hard to understand. It is our indistinct recognition that our self-boundaries are

constructions, but we do not want to admit it. We want to make them stronger, harder,

permanent. We crave more, to have more and be more, and to live forever. And all

to no avail; the more we crave, the unhappier we become, and self-destruction looms.Frustration mounts, and life as we have understood (misunderstood) it, seems to be

futile. Building up our sense of separate self, even at the expense of others, gets us

nowhere. Self-subduing through ethical practice (right speech, action and livelihood)

and through mental training (meditation), is the subduing of this craving. It really is

possible to subdue it, and people who have done so are instantly identifiable by their

inclusiveness, equanimity, joy, wisdom and kindness. Different people may subdue it

to different extents, but even a slight subduing has immeasurable benefits in

dissolving the anxiety - bringing one nearer to peace and wisdom, as well as to more

care for others however remote they may be.

In the Buddhas teaching, the ethical practice is not something separate fromthe meditation; it is part and parcel of one single orientation. It is all about loosening

up that apparently solid self-boundary, admitting its impermanence (and thus the

impermanence of all things), and coming to see how holding onto boundaries is the

source of suffering and dissatisfaction in all things. Life as we know it, is constructed

out of such boundaries, and thus suffering is structured into the very nature of things

as we experience them. We cannot both be alive as we normally understand it and

abolish all boundaries at the same time; but we can see, understand and accept the

flimsy, transitory nature of such boundaries and thus transform our very

understanding of life itself. I sense that there is some affinity here with Wittgensteins

criticism of the philosophical response: responding to the flimsiness of our boundaries

by trying to create an even more solid one, a rational foundation that everyone mustaccept.

The question about the connection of meditation and social responsibility is

the same as a question about the connection of the ethical component of the Buddhas

teaching and the meditational component. This has often been misunderstood. People

sometimes speak of Buddhist ethics as though there were some list of principles of

conduct that are a kind of add-on to meditation. However, one cannot really meditate

and at the same time hang on to actions (and deliberate omissions), speaking and

writing, and work or employment that are deceptive, manipulative, exploiting, harsh,

demeaning, bullying, lustful, spiteful, and angry. That would simply be inconsistent.

To inspect the boundary of self, and learn its ways of protection, consolidation andextension is to watch and get to know the greed, hatred, ignorance and fear that live

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within all of us.Meditation is intrinsically an ethical activity, an engendering of social

responsibility.

When I discover the truth of my internal oppression then I see how we are all

doing it most of the time, and each is doing it to himself/herself and to everyone else

at the very same moment. See the suffering in the world and see the oppressor /

oppressed at work. It is each one of us. To meditate is to support the oppressed andlet go of the oppressor in oneself and in the world the very same thing. Peace in

oneself, peace in the world, says Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh.

Meditation and peaceful resistance are one and the same thing. When I support the

victim and at once help the oppressor or abuser to let go of the oppressor within

himself then I am meditating, and I am peacefully resisting.

To change yourself is to change the world. Trying to change the world without

self-change is unskilful, fruitless and at worst harmful. To begin to bring peace to

yourself is to begin, really begin, to bring peace into the world. Thus Dogen Zenji

makes clear that responsibility begins with you, and it is of a negative kind i.e. a

letting go of the small clinging self:

Life can be likened to a time when a person is sailing in a boat. On this boat, I

am operating the sail, I have taken the rudder, I am pushing the pole; at the

same time, the boat is carrying me, and there is no I beyond the boat. Through

my sailing of the boat, this boat is being caused to be a boat let us consider,

and learn in practice, just this moment of present. So life is what I am

making it, and I am what life is making me. What has been described like

this is that life is the self, and the self is life.18

Conclusion: The Jonas Paradox

I conclude with words which express a sentiment I share, and which Jonas might have

benefited from, words from a Japanese Zen philosopher (theologian) who has entered

into dialogue with Western theology:

Currently, we have different peace, human rights, and other social reform

movements. If these movements are pursued only from a political and social

standpoint without a basis in our deep realization of the true Self, however,

such an approach may not yield adequate solutions they can create more

confusion.19

Abes expression is here in danger of misleading us into a theory or metaphysics ofTrue Self, but I take him to be only pointing to the Zen practice rather than trying to

provide a foundation for it. Abe, at least, has tried to open an East-West dialogue.

A far-reaching dialogue needs to be opened between Zen (and Zen-like

practices in other traditions) and modern science and technology, modern psychology

and psychotherapy, modern organisational change management and policy studies,

and modern society generally. Traditional Zen now has its own historical, cultural and

institutional difficulties and is dying in its own homeland. I believe we need a

Modern Zen for the problems of modern world that Hans Jonas has so effectively

emphasized.

Paradoxically, Jonas conviction that a rational foundation (theory,

metaphysics, ultimate ground) is possible and necessary is a crucial supporting

assumption of the very kind of technocratic civilization that he wishes to criticise and

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transcend. It is the very civilisation that clings to explanationism as the very basis of

its self-destruction. Wittgenstein pointed out that in a technologically successful

society it is easy for a kind of idol worship [to develop], the idol being science and

the scientist.20

He added that the fatal thing about the scientific way of thinking,

which the whole world employs nowadays, is that it wants to produce an explanation

in answer to each anxiety.21

This explanationism is a hallmark of a self-destructive technocratic civilisation,

and it is also found in the works of philosophers, and even in the work of a

philosophical critic of this civilization such as Hans Jonas. While Jonass heart is in

the right place, his intellect is partially confused. A coherent and consistent critic of

this civilisation has to be a critic of explanationism, and here the approach of Zen is

most appropriate. It shows us how the global problems we face are not just problems

of environment, economy, politics, they are first and foremost our problems. The

difficulty lies with our clinging to what we think we are.

Wittgenstein understood that philosophers may hope for a change of aspect

(attitude) in people, a turning away from a technocratic society, but he knew that this

does not require a theory, and even if it did people would not understand it or accept it:

..its possible, moreover, that such an admonition [to see things differently]

can achieve nothing in any case and that the impetus for such a change in the

way things are perceived has to originate somewhere else entirely.22

Zen practitioners may recall how Right View sometimes comes about. A change of

attitude may be the result of a shout or even a compassionate blow with a stick.

References

1a Caring about the human future is global in geographical extent, it is directed to the

future and is therefore policy-oriented, and it might be described as an ethical concern.

Therefore we could use the phrase Global Policy Ethics to mean the same thing.

1. Hans Jonas. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the

Technological Age. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1984.

p. 25. Hereafter referred to as IR. Also see: Hans Jonas. The Phenomenon of Life:

Towards a Philosophical Biology. Harper & Row, 1966; University of Chicago Press,

1982; Northwestern UP, 2001. I am grateful to Prof. Morishita, Naoki for his paper

Nanotechnology and Life: A Philosophical Perspective, presented at First Annual

International Workshop on ELSI of Nanotechnologies 2nd

April 2004, St Marys

College (a college of the University of Surrey), UK.

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), born in Vienna, went to Cambridge Universityin 1911 to work with Bertrand Russell, reluctantly became Professor of Philosophy at

Cambridge. Most influential work is probably: Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical

Investigations, ed. G E M Anscombe & R Rhees, Blackwell, 1st

edition, 1953; 3rd

revised edition, 2001. Dogen Kigen (1200-1253), spiritual founder of the Soto School

of Zen, born in Kyoto. I have used the English translation of his Shobogenzo:

Master Dogens Shobogenzo, trans. G Nishijima & C Cross, London & Tokyo, 1997,

four volumes.

3. IR, pp. x-xi, 8.

4. Hunt, G. Nanotechnologies & Global Policy Ethics: Hans Jonas, Precaution &

Public Accountability, Paper presented at Tokyo University, Japan on 22nd

October

2004 (13.00-14.30 hrs).

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12/12

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5. By technocratic I mean the political, economic and ideological rule by means of

technology. See also: Hunt, G. The Role of Philosophy and Philosophers in Modern

Healthcare, Studies in Comparative Philosophy (Japanese Association for

Comparative Philosophy, Tokyo) No. 28 (March 2002) pp. 1-8 (ISSN 0286-2379);

Hunt, G. Good Nursing, Nursing the Good: Kitaro Nishidas Philosophy & Nursing,

Quality Nursing: The Japanese Journal of Nursing Education & Nursing Research Vol.9 No. 1 (January 2003), pp. 63-73.

6. IR, pp. 7-8.

7. Scodel, H (2003). Interview with Professor Hans Jonas,New School for Social

Research. Available at:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_2_70/ai_107489496/print

8. Kant decided that the nature, functions and limitations of human mental capacities

such as reason needed to be investigated before progress could be made in

philosophy. The conditions of the very possibility of knowledge are his concern, but

his approach still suffers from foundationalism of a kind.

9. See note 2.

10. Wittgenstein, L. Wittgensteins Lectures: Cambridge 1932-35, ed. Alice Ambrose,Blackwell, 1979.

11. Wittgenstein, L. Wittgensteins Lectures: Cambridge 1930-32, ed. Desmond Lee,

Blackwell, 1980, p. 34. On the critique of foundationalism also see: Wittgenstein, L.

On Certainty, ed. GEM Anscombe & GH von Wright, Blackwell, Oxford, 1969.

12. Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Grammar, ed. Rush Rhees, Blackwell, 1974, p. 381.

13. Johnston, P. Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy. Routledge, London, 1989, p. 89.

This book has given me some useful general guidance on Wittgensteins ethics.

14. Wittgenstein, L. Culture & Value. 2nd edition (English), Blackwell, Oxford, 1980,

p. 26.

15. Shobogenzo [see note 2 above], vol. 1 (Bendowa), p. 10, sec. 32.

16. Shobogenzo [see note 2 above], vol. 1 (Shoaku-makusa), pp. 99-100, sec. 6.

17. Shobogenzo [see note 2 above], vol. 1 (Shoaku-makusa), p. 103, sec. 14.

18. Shobogenzo [see note 2 above], vol. 2 (Zenki), p. 286, sec. 232.

19. Abe, Masao. Zen and the Modern World. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu,

2003, pp. 32-33.

20. Wittgenstein, L. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and

Religious Belief. Blackwell, Oxford, 1970, p. 27.

21. Quoted in Kenny, A. The Legacy of Wittgenstein. Blackwell, Oxford, 1984, p. 43.

22. 14. Wittgenstein, L. Culture & Value. 2nd edition (English), Blackwell, Oxford,

1980, p. 61.

Works by Rush Rhees (For your interest)

Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, ed. D Z Phillips, Cambridge U.P., 1998.

There like our Life, ed. D Z Phillips (forthcoming?)

Discussions of Wittgenstein. Routledge, London, 1970.

Without Answers. ed. D Z Phillips, Routledge, London, 1969

On Religion & Philosophy. ed. D Z Phillips, Cambridge U.P., 1997.

care, social responsibility hans jonas, witt

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