Abstract

Bioethics faces two closely linked problems: though the concept of human dignity is widely acclaimed, it becomes highly controversial as soon as we try to define its content and meaning extension; we strongly need a method or theory of reasoning that allows us to determine the relation between moral principles and concrete cases. In a broader although strict philosophical sense these two problems of recent bioethics are related with Kant’s concepts of ‘Autonomy’ and ‘reflective judgement’, which can be combined in view of a threefold logic of establishing rules. Such logic is anticipated in Montesquieu’s doctrine of the distribution of powers, since by defining and executing rules we also have to identify the cases of their application .Thus we can understand the relation between moral concepts or principles and facts or concrete cases as a dynamical relation constituting its moments, and therefore can comprehend human dignity rather as a ‘regulative idea’, then as a concept that has to be definitely defined