Abstract
Since the first atomic explosions we have lived in the modern world, where a danger of the annihilation of mankind holds us in suspense. Coping with our potentialities for the self-destruction of human existence is not only a basic condition of our being together with each other, but it also provides an opportunity for beginning to think anew from wondering.
Originally, philosophers were concerned not with the topics of death and mortality, but with the subjects of immortality and eternity. Political life and metaphysics were among the main ways for mortals to immortalize themselves. Christianity then discovered another hope: deathless life hereafter. The evaluation of life itself as the highest good has survived modern skepticism. As a result of modernity only the potentially unending life process of the species mankind might be immortal. Now, for us who are likely to lose this last hope, how could it be “real” to think upon immortalities?
In his essay on “Immortality and the Modern Temper” H. Jonas narrates a hypothetical myth of the risk of the Creator, in terms of which human deeds could become immortal: our cooperative enterprise to ensure creatures' existence in the future. This type of striving for immortality consists of two principles, life and world. Responsibility for the permanent world is required by intergenerational ethics, and should be accompanied by a concern for “things” insofar as the world is composed of such entities, man-made objects. Things, though fabricated by mortals, are of a certain durability and stability. Without their “reality” we can not live a human life. Our ordinary care for things grows into love for the world.
Inspired by M. Heidegger's terminology of “metontology” I propose to name this manner of turning back to the ontico-ethical conditions of our persisting Being-in-the-world “meta-thanatology.”
