The «great burden» of religion: Jonas on Heidegger’s ambivalence towards the Jewish-Christian tradition

This article aims to reread the famous conference on Heidegger and Theology linking it with a still unpublished lecture on Being and Time Jonas held in 1967 at the New School for Social Research. From the reading of Heidegger’s masterwork, Jonas takes the idea of the ‘burdensome’ character of the existence, which he interprets in terms of a ‘polarity’ between man and its ‘other’ (other man, God, world). Such a polarity is for Jonas the very essence of ‘religion’ (as religamen) and of responsibility. From this vantage point, the conference, with its sharp criticism against the theological appropriation of Heidegger’s post-turn philosophy, appears to be a strong defense of the burden of ‘polarity’, as developed in Being and Time, against its removal by the thought of Being: a Being which is nothing but a mirror image of Dasein. Partially reconsidering his views on Heidegger’s Gnosticism, Jonas turns (the earlier) Heidegger against (the later) Heidegger himself.