title: [Dependents and rationale: the human family].
abstract: There are many concepts that influence bioethics, which can make it prosper or fail. We will focus here on two of them, namely the concept of dependency, which functions as a necessary complement of the concept of autonomy, and the concept of human family, which probably should work as a substitute in moral contexts of the notion of human species. In a deeper level, both dependency and human family, refer to another concept, endowed with a long philosophical tradition, that of human nature, which has become the center of debate in recent years. Modernity can be characterized as a search for autonomy. Autonomy in many ways is a desirable objective and fair. However, this one-sided emphasis on autonomy has led to a partial anthropology; hence the importance of developing also an anthropology of dependency, and emphasizing the links that connect the different members of the human family.
authors.affiliation: Universidad de Valladolid, Spain. amarcos@fyl.uva.es
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marcos Martínez
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004989:Ethics; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D026684:Personal Autonomy