Abstract
One of the major themes of bio-ethics is to defend human dignity. But the concept of what makes up the idea is obscure. The aim of this paper is to give the new difinition of human dignity. Traditionally the idea was based mainly upon the concept of reasonable autonomy described by Immanuel Kant. Indeed this idea has taken a crucial role in the making of our modern civil society. Thus a person who has such reasonable autonomy should have the right and duty to participate in the society. But the concept cannot be applied to such rights as the right to live, because these rights were employed to be also given to those who neither have such autonomy nor claim the right. These rights have their base upon the other meaning of human dignity, but so far about the meaning no consensus was reached. This situation around human dignity caused confused discussions typically in so called "person-argument" by Michael Tooly or Tristram Engelhardt. Hans Jonas insists on making responsibility a new ethical principle. According to him, this capability of human beings, compared with those of other living creatures on earth, is specific to human beings. This specificity lies in that it obliges itself to make itself continue. That is, those who now have the capability to take responsibility also have the duty to be responsible for those who will have the capability in the future. This principle protects in advance those who are not yet in our present society. We can make the capability of responsibility the new definition of human dignity and apply this as principle to our present problems of bio-ethics.
