Abstract

This paper shows the way in which Kant may be involved nowadays in the bioethics debates. Those who think embryos are subject to be regulated exclusively by public law may end in aporias like that: in vitro Embryos have the right to live but they enjoy no dignity, so, according to the German Grundgesetz, nobody can take the responsibility to fulfil this right. Only human dignity enjoys full protection whereas the right to live must not. Such misleading patterns of argumentation rest upon the false idea that human dignity is a thing we may gain or lose, give or revoke. Rather than a quality that one can award, dignity stands for a structure of recognition and acceptance that accounts for what we call humanity. And this is what makes sense of the Kantian Idea of humanity as a regulative one