CONCEPT
The Organism and Its Freedom
Jonas's ontological claim that the metabolizing organism — not the programmed machine — is the first being in nature for which something is at stake, and therefore the ground of all subsequent value.
The organism's metabolic self-maintenance is the first instance of freedom in nature. Not freedom in the political sense, not free will in the metaphysical sense, but freedom in the most basic ontological sense: the organism has wrested a space of possibility from the physical world. It has achieved a precarious independence from the immediate dictates of its material environment. It must constantly work to maintain this independence — metabolism never stops, never takes a day off, never reaches completion — and the possibility of failure, of death, of the cessation of the metabolic process, is built into every moment of the organism's existence. This means the organism is the first being for which its own existence matters. The rock does not care whether it persists. The flame does not care whether it goes out. The organism, by the mere fact of its metabolic needfulness, is a being for which things are at stake.
