ABSTRACT
We are living in an age when the human community is in search of new and sustaining relationships to nature. Much of our conventional morality and attitudes are seriously challenged by dramatic expansions of our technological capacities through newly available chemical and biological means. The possibility of genetic engineering further puts us in danger of what Dworkin has called a ‘state of moral free-fall’ (2000: 448). Not only is the technology bringing a new way of understanding what we are and endless possibilities of enabling us to influence what we are, at the same time human agency, with the new technology at its command, is also causing increasingly extensive modifications to the natural environment, often destroying ecosystems on which both humanity and other species depend. We are warned that all these modifications and destructions are happening at a speed and on a scale which is unprecedented. Furthermore, some of the possible changes are irreversible, threatening the very existence of all life forms on the planet, including the existence of humankind itself. The need to respond is urgent.
