A renova o da teleologia em Hans Jonas: da biologia filosófica aos fundamentos da ética

The present paper aims to elucidate the renewal of teleology in the thought of Hans Jonas showing how it takes up two central functions, namely: to think a philosophical biology – or ontology – that more accurately meets the construction of a coming-to-be and psychophysical universe; and to think the ought-to-be of humanity as the telos and absolute value in the evolutionary process of Being. To accomplish our goal, we explain first that what Jonas calls the “riddle of subjectivity” is the basic problem of ontology, and that modern philosophy fails to respond to it, thus requiring a rehabilitation – and renewal – of a teleological conception of being. Then we will show that this renewal of teleology, that can be called “neo-finalism”, defines finalism as intrinsic not only to individual beings, but also to the devenir of the world itself, where man would be the very ultimate realization of a latent possibility within this evolutionary process of the universal substance. Hence would result a principle of ethics which is ultimately grounded neither in the autonomy of the self nor in the needs of community, but in the teleological character of the evolutionary process of nature itself – man as the “final quality”, and thus the absolute value, of such a process. That is to say, for Jonas teleology aims to finally answer what is the good about humanity, who would sign as well as the very foundation of ethics.