Gefahrenzivilisation und Schöpfung: Verantwortung neu denken – Menschenwürde neu beachten

This article contains analyses of the concept of responsibility in the state of danger caused by damaging consequences of technological development. The inquiry – inspired by conceptions of Hans Jonas and Karl-Otto Apel but arguing in the “actual dialogic-reflexive” approach of transcendental discourse pragmatics – is concentrated on finding borders of our responsibility, for which parts of our action should we feel accountable. For this purpose seven obligations of a discourse partner are reconstructed by means of reflection on the presuppositions of arguing. These obligations have a transcendental-pragmatic status of implicit dialogic promises: They can be disregarded only at the price of a performative self-contradiction. Another problem which is stated in this paper is a question about justification for our moral obligations, including our obligations for the future generations and the problem of motivation to fulfil it. The last part of the article describes reflexive transcendentale arguments for including embryos in our concept of responsibility. Explaining some doubts about the status of embryos is also helping to understand better the way in which we should perceive the concept of responsibility itself. It should be taken into consideration that we live in times in which our knowledge about the world is not always standing up to our abilities to influence it. The authors emphasise that the article is actually a lecture, that invites to reading a transcendental pragmatic book: Böhler 2013/2014.