Hans Jonas – The Concept of God after Auschwitz (1984)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Why Jonas Now?
After Levinas’s ethical critique of totality, the theological question arises: if ethics comes before ontology – what then becomes of God? And more radically: can one still believe in God at all after Auschwitz? And if so: in what kind of God?
Hans Jonas develops a negative theology after Auschwitz – not as a return to religion, but as philosophical reflection on the limits of reconciliation. His position is paradoxical: he develops a theology of the powerless God – and in doing so uses Hegel’s structures (becoming, self-externalization, return to self) in order to overcome Hegel.
We treat Jonas after Levinas, because he radicalizes his question: Levinas says the Other is infinite. Jonas asks: if that is true – how can God then be omnipotent? An omnipotent God could have prevented Auschwitz. A God who did not prevent it is morally unacceptable. So: either there is no God, or God is not omnipotent.
Intellectual-Historical Framing: Who Is Jonas? To What Is He Reacting?
Hans Jonas was born in 1903 in Mönchengladbach, the son of an assimilated Jewish family. He studied philosophy with Martin Heidegger in Marburg (together with Hannah Arendt) and in 1928 wrote a dissertation on Gnosticism – early Christian sects that rejected the material world as evil.[1]
Emigration and Struggle: In 1933, immediately after Hitler’s seizure of power, Jonas emigrated to Palestine. In 1940 he volunteered for the British Army – he wanted to fight as a soldier against Nazi Germany. He served in the Jewish Brigade, fought in Italy, marched into Germany in 1945. His mother, Rosalie Jonas, was deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and murdered there.[2]
After 1945 Jonas taught first in Jerusalem, then from 1955 at the New School for Social Research in New York. His main works: “The Imperative of Responsibility” (1979) – an ethics for the technological age, and the lecture “The Concept of God after Auschwitz” (1984).
The Philosophical Question: Jonas was a student of Heidegger’s, but Heidegger had supported the Nazis. Jonas broke with him – not only personally, but philosophically. Heidegger’s “being-toward-death,” the emphasis on authenticity, the contempt for “the they” – all this appeared to Jonas after Auschwitz as cynical. If six million were sent to their deaths, one’s own death can no longer be an “authentic” possibility – it is murder.[3]
The question of God posed itself existentially for Jonas: his mother was murdered. How can one still believe in a good, omnipotent God?
The Steelman Position: The Myth of the Becoming God
Jonas’s lecture “The Concept of God after Auschwitz” is not an academic text, but a myth – a philosophical narrative that expresses a truth that cannot be directly proven. Jonas is aware that he is speculating – but after Auschwitz, sober theology is no longer possible.[4]
The Theodicy Question Radicalized
The theodicy question has been asked since Leibniz: how can an omnipotent, omniscient, all-good God allow evil in the world? The classical answers:
- Evil is necessary for freedom (Augustine)
- Evil is punishment for sin (orthodox theology)
- Evil is only apparent; from God’s perspective everything is good (Leibniz)
After Auschwitz these answers are obscene. Six million murdered Jews – among them a million and a half children – as “necessary for freedom”? As “punishment”? As “apparent”? This is unbearable.
Jonas’s radical thesis: the theodicy question must be posed differently. Not: “Why does God allow evil?” But: “Could God have prevented it?”
The Myth: God Externalizes Himself into the World
Jonas tells a creation myth, inspired by Jewish Kabbalah (especially Isaac Luria’s concept of Zimzum – God’s self-contraction):
In the beginning was God – infinite, perfect, resting in himself. But this perfection was lonely. A God who is everything has no counterpart. So God decided to externalize himself – to limit himself, to create space for an Other.
Creation is God’s self-externalization. God withdraws (Zimzum), so that the world can come into being. But this world is no longer in God’s hand. God has surrendered his control over it. The world obeys its own laws – natural laws, causality, contingency.
The Consequence: God is no longer omnipotent. He has given up his omnipotence so that freedom and world become possible. God is now becoming – he develops with the world, he suffers with his creatures, he is powerless before evil.[5]
Auschwitz is then not God’s work, not God’s permission, not God’s punishment – but the price of freedom. Humans received freedom – and abused it for annihilation. God could not prevent it, because he no longer has the power to do so.
The Inversion of Classical Theology
Jonas’s myth inverts the classical divine attributes:
Not omnipotent, but powerless: God has given up power so that the world can be autonomous.
Not immutable, but becoming: God develops with world history, he is not eternally the same.
Not apathetic, but suffering: God suffers with his creatures – he is not beyond joy and pain.
Not omniscient, but hoping: God does not know how history will turn out – he hopes that humanity will choose the good.
This is negative theology in the radical sense: no longer saying what God is, but only what he is not. After Auschwitz one can no longer speak positively of God.
The Responsibility of the Human Being
If God is powerless, the human being bears full responsibility. Not: “God will set it right.” But: “We must set it right.” God’s redemption depends on the human being – not the reverse.
Jonas formulates: “After Auschwitz we can assert with new urgency that God suffers with his creation.” But this suffering is no justification. It is a mandate: because God is powerless, we must be powerful. Because God does not intervene, we must act.[6]
Sublation I: What Is True in Jonas’s Position?
Jonas grasps the irreconcilability of Auschwitz with any affirmative philosophy of history or theology. The attempt to “explain” Auschwitz, to “justify” it, to integrate it into a higher plan – all of this is indecent.
The Honesty of Despair
Jonas admits: this theology is speculative, not demonstrable. He offers no comfort. A powerless God cannot help, cannot save, cannot intervene. But this honesty is more dignified than cheap consolations (“God has a plan we don’t understand”).
The alternative would be: atheism – there is no God. But Jonas holds fast: the mystery of being, the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, remains. The powerless God is Jonas’s attempt to think this mystery without cynicism.
The Inversion of Responsibility
If God is powerless, the human being can no longer hide behind a divine plan. “God’s will” can no longer serve to justify injustice. The human being is solely responsible – for good and evil.
This is an ethical position of great clarity: we must act, we must prevent Auschwitz from repeating itself. Not pray, not hope that God will intervene – but do.
The Rescue of the Theodicy Question
Paradoxically, Jonas rescues the theodicy question by negating it. The question “Why does God allow evil?” is wrongly posed – the right question is: “What do we do about it?” Jonas transforms theology into ethics.
Sublation II: The Inner Contradictions Emerge
Jonas’s myth is impressive – but it falls into contradictions similar to Levinas’s. The attempt to develop a new theology after Auschwitz becomes entangled in paradoxes.
First Contradiction: A God Who Is No Longer a God
The Problem: what still distinguishes Jonas’s “God” from an idea, a principle, a hope? If God is not omnipotent, not omniscient, not eternal – why still call him “God”?
Classical theology (Jewish, Christian, Islamic) defines God through transcendence: God is the absolute, the unconditioned, the eternal. Jonas’s God is immanent – he develops with the world, he is finite, he is conditioned.
The Question: is this still theology? Or is it metaphysics that uses theological language? Jonas himself calls his text a “myth” – but a myth that is known as myth is no longer a myth, but allegory.
Second Contradiction: Jonas Uses Hegel’s Structures
The Problem: Jonas’s myth is structurally Hegelian:
- Self-externalization: God externalizes himself into the world – exactly as Hegel’s concept externalizes itself into nature
- Becoming: God becomes with history – exactly as Hegel’s spirit develops in history
- Return to self: God hopes for redemption through the human being – exactly as Hegel’s spirit returns to itself
Jonas criticizes Hegel’s philosophy of history (because it guarantees reconciliation) – but he uses Hegel’s dialectical structure (externalization, becoming, return). He cannot escape Hegel.
The Parallel to Levinas: as Levinas writes books while criticizing systematicity, so Jonas uses dialectic while refusing reconciliation. The performative contradiction is the same: one cannot, by reflecting, step out of reflection.
Third Contradiction: The Philosophy of History Remains
The Problem: Jonas says God develops with history. He hopes for redemption through history. That is still a philosophy of history – only a negative, uncertain, hoping one.
But a negative philosophy of history is still a philosophy of history. The difference from Hegel: Hegel knows how history turns out (reconciliation). Jonas hopes it turns out well. But both have a direction: development, progress (guaranteed in Hegel’s case, hoped for in Jonas’s).
The Question: is Jonas’s position tenable after Auschwitz? If Auschwitz shows that history does not necessarily lead to the good – why hope at all? Is this hope not itself a form of reconciliation – only a desperate one?
Fourth Contradiction: The Powerless God Is Superfluous
The Problem: if God is powerless, what does belief in him bring? He cannot help, cannot intervene, cannot save. The practical difference between Jonas’s God and no God at all is minimal.
An atheist would say: full responsibility lies with the human being – because there is no God. Jonas says: full responsibility lies with the human being – because God is powerless. The result is identical: we must act.
The Question: why then does one still need God? Jonas’s answer would presumably be: to preserve the mystery, to preserve humility before the incomprehensible. But is that enough? Or is Jonas’s God a last, desperate attempt to rescue theology where it can no longer be rescued?
Sublation III: Systematic Placement
Jonas shows: Hegel cannot be affirmatively continued after Auschwitz. Reconciliation is not guaranteed. History is not necessarily rational. Optimistic faith in history is refuted.
What Remains Productive?
The radicality of refusal: Jonas refuses to “explain” Auschwitz, to “justify” it, to integrate it into a higher plan. This refusal is decent – it respects the victims, instead of making them moments of a system.
The emphasis on responsibility: Jonas’s ethics is clear: we are responsible. Not God, not history, not fate. This responsibility is total – we cannot delegate it.
Negative theology: Jonas shows that one can no longer speak positively of God after Auschwitz. One can only say what God is not. This is an important limit for any speculative theology.
What Remains Problematic?
The indistinguishability of theism and atheism: if God’s powerlessness makes no practical difference, why not become an atheist right away? Jonas’s theology is so negative that it almost tips into its opposite.
The use of Hegelian structures: Jonas cannot escape dialectic. His myth is Hegelian in structure – self-externalization, becoming, hope for return. He criticizes Hegel with Hegel’s own means.
The remaining philosophy of history: Jonas’s hope is still teleological – directed toward redemption, return, reconciliation (even if not guaranteed). A truly post-Hegelian philosophy would have to give up this hope as well.
The Direction for a Contemporary Reception of Hegel
Jonas shows: the structure of dialectic (self-externalization, negation, return) remains indispensable – even those who criticize Hegel think dialectically. But the certainty of reconciliation must be given up.
The task: to think a dialectic without guaranteed reconciliation. A dialectic that is open – that does not know where it leads. A dialectic of hope, not of certainty.
Hegel himself had approaches: the “contingency of nature,” which cannot be completely rationalized. The “cunning of reason,” which shows: history is not transparently controllable. These moments would need to be radicalized: not only contingency within the system, but contingency of the system itself.
Hans Jonas: Gnosis und spätantiker Geist, 2 vols., Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1934/1954 (dissertation 1928 under Heidegger and Bultmann). ↩︎
On Jonas’s biography: Christian Wiese: The Life and Thought of Hans Jonas: Jewish Dimensions, Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2007; Lawrence Vogel: “Introduction,” in: Hans Jonas: Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good after Auschwitz, ed. Lawrence Vogel, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996, pp. 1–24. ↩︎
Hans Jonas: “Heidegger and Theology” (1964), in: The Phenomenon of Life, New York: Harper & Row, 1966, pp. 235–261. Jonas criticizes Heidegger’s “being-toward-death” as cynical after the Shoah. ↩︎
Hans Jonas: The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice (lecture 1984), first in: Reflexionen finsterer Zeit, ed. Hanna Jonas/Werner Kogon, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1984, pp. 61–86; later in Hans Jonas: Philosophische Untersuchungen und metaphysische Vermutungen, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1992, pp. 190–208. ↩︎
Jonas: The Concept of God after Auschwitz, pp. 197–199: “After God has completely given himself over to the becoming world, he has nothing more to give: now it is for humanity to give to him.” ↩︎
Ibid., p. 208. ↩︎