Utopianism and Anti-Utopianism, in Bloch and Jonas

At forty years of Hans Jonas' The Principle of Responsibility, the essay proceeds with an exploratory survey and an analysis of the ethical-political tension regarding the concepts of utopia and anti-utopia, arranged and positioned by the Blochian and Jonasian philosophies. If for Bloch what has moved - and certainly will continue to move - humanity receives its identity from the docta spes (the understood hope), in the form of concrete utopia, founded on the ontology of the 'not yet conscious'; for Jonas, on the contrary, it is necessary to overcome the utopian mentality, especially the technological one, derived from and executing the Baconian project, in order to facilitate the consolidation of the ethics of responsibility for technological civilization. If one ethical-political position ends up questioning the other, the critical explanation of both arguments is intended, which may provide some elements of understanding of the problem. The underlying hypotesis points to the most vulnerable part of The Responsibility Principle, chapters V and VI, in which the Jonasian critique of the utopia of assumptions derived from Marxist philosophy occurs, synthesized and updated in Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope.