Toward a “strong” normativity of fear in Hans Jonas and Aristotle

Abstract What does it mean to say that one “ought” to undergo an emotion? In The Imperative of Responsibility , Hans Jonas provocatively asserts that twentieth‐century citizens “ought” to fear for the well‐being of future generations. I argue that Jonas's demand is not straightforwardly reducible to claims about the fittingness, expedience, or aretaic desirability of fear, and I present an interpretation of its content and coherence using Aristotle's moral psychology of fear in the Rhetoric , Politics , and Nicomachean Ethics as a framework. Aristotle's account of fear as an anticipatory, imaginative stance that alters perception and judgment helps to clarify that Jonas's demand concerns acts of affect‐laden, imaginative reflection through which one might revise one's affective sensibilities with regard to future persons. I conclude by considering several objections to Jonas's first‐order argument, and indicating several clarifications and caveats that are important for formulating strong normative assertions about political emotions more generally.