ANTHROPOCENTIC AND BIOCENTRIC RESPONSIBILITY FOR LIFE

Abstract

The author starts from the hypothesis on the existence of two ways of comprehending the responsibility for life: 'only for the human life' and 'for the whole life'. They are the consequence of evaluating life and the pre-supposition of moral action. An opinion pol has been carried out (April 2005) at five faculties of the University of Zagreb, on the occasional sample of 492 respondents from the first and final year of study. Instruments for discerning diferent bioethical issues that are associated with the responsibility of humans for life have been designed. Techniques of univariant, bivariant and multivariant statistics have been applied. The majority of respondents (74%-84%) do not accept assertions on the human responsibility only for his/her life or only for the life of humans, for the life of human race and human species, and for the life of animal that are beneficial to humans. On the contrary, the majority of respondents accept the responsibility for al life, even the one that is only conceived but not yet born. On the instrument of ‘responsibility for life’ the factor analysis has established two independent factors: ‘responsibility only for human life’ – anthropocentric responsibility (F1) and ‘responsibility for al life’ – biocentric responsibility (F2), that explain 56.42% of the variance. Independency of the factors (F1 and F2) confirm the existence of two groups of respondents and also confirm the existence of two concepts of responsibility for life: anthropocentric and biocentric, that indicate basis for two bioethic orientations: anthropocentric and biocentric ethics.