THE HERMENEUTIC OF THE LIVING BY THE LIVING BEING: HANS JONAS AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Abstract

This text intends to analyze the defense of anthropomorphism made by the
philosopher Hans Jonas, as a way of accessing animal life. In order to do so,
the bases of the critique of dualism and post-dualist monisms (especially
materialism) will be analyzed in the proposal of a philosophical biology carried
out in the work The phenomenon of life, from 1966. It will be seen that the
recovery of anthropomorphism makes sense only when thought of as a critique
of the objectivism of modern science and, in these terms, in the experience of
animal existence itself as such, something that demands the tools of
phenomenology. The example analyzed in this text is that of animal
expressiveness.