First Things First. The Concept of Primordial Co-responsibility. On the Foundation of a Planetary Macroethics

Abstract

This article has the purpose of thinking about three basic questions. Firstly, the traditional notion of “responsibility” -being mainly of individual nature- is analysed and the need is exposed to complement it with the notion of “co-responsibility”. Given that any personal act along with the personal responsibility that goes with it presupposes social institutions from the very beginning (meaning the subject-subject relation), accepting responsibility for these collective acts (e.g. wars, poverty, destruction of the biosphere, etc.) must be postulated unconditionally. Secondly, this paper lays the foundations in a pragmatic-transcendental way for the concept of primordial co-responsibility. From this point of view and comparison with other ethical doctrines, the shortcomings of other attempts to deal with the difficulties at hand become clear. Neither utilitarian nor deontological ethics, in the sense of classical Kantianism, and naturally Neo-Aristotelian nor community ethics are capable of providing the foundations for a macro-ethic on a planetary level. Finally, it is shown how a co-responsible way of applying discursive ethics is possible with the purpose to dissolve appropriately the problems arising from the collective acts of Humanity in our present world and which require a spirit of solidary co-responsibility.