Que veut la nature, que veut la vie ? Deux approches phénoménologiques convergentes de la téléologie

Jonas’s strategy of proposing an ontological foundation for ecology—and thus defending nature and the future of life on Earth against the unre­strained advance of technology—consists in highlighting human life as the apex of a unitary tendency within nature itself: a tendency toward the ever-greater affirmation of being, a movement betrayed, for instance, by nihilism. In Patočka, consciousness or the soul—that within us which is capable of entering into an explicit relationship with the world as a whole, the soul as the manifest appearance of the world to someone—is conceived as a dimension without which the world would be impoverished, and thus as one rooted in the deepest layers of the world’s foundation. Patočka justifies this position through a line of reasoning with a strong teleological thrust, one that, in many of its key moments, closely resembles Jonas’s attempt to ground ecology in ontology. This contribution follows these two closely aligned arguments, both of which share a distinct teleological character.