earticle

영어

This thesis is a study on an embryo has the condition of being human or not. Someone has to be regarded as human being, he/she has a right of living, which is derived from the being a person in the moral sense. We have naturally thought an embryo is human, but today it becomes problematic whether an embryo is a human being or not. This argument has been raised by a rapid developing of biotechnology such as prenatal genetic screening, embryonic reproduction etc. In the biotechnology an embryo is surely not regarded as a human being, but only a living material. It can cause a deep moral injure to think an embryo is not a human being. For human being is a person in the moral sense, and a person has been only thought that can make us live freely. At last we have human dignity, when we live as a person. But the thought that an embryo is not a human being has brought about the possibility of ‘a human being without person’, which is conceived by P. Singer in his Practical Ethics(1991). Further more Singer criticizes a Kant’s view of human dignity as a ‘speciesm’ in the basis of a concept of a human being without person. In this paper I have examined a historical origin of Singer’s concepts, a human being without person firstly and a speciesm especially in comparison with Kant’s view of human dignity nextly. I have also examined that Kant’s concept of autonomy has to be substituted by ‘self-disposability’ in Singer’s bioethical viewpoint, but Singer’s viewpoint is also criticised by Sandel’s ‘ethics of genetic enhancement’ lastly.