The Ethics of Responsibility as a Way to the Future

The basic concept in the philosophy of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker is the concept of time. Playing the dominant role in the thought and philosophy of Weizsäcker, the concept is the point of departure for an attempt to find ways to cognize and recreate the unity of Nature, to understand “the unity of physics” and its reconstruction in the neo-Kantian spirit, as well as seek and analyse conditions of the possibilities of science and its ethical dimension. In this context Weizsäcker analyses relations between the structure of time and the ethical responsibility of a man practising science. The present study aims to demonstrate the basic elements of this relation as the foundation of the ethics of scientific research. Responsible scientific research is only possible when men operating within the field are guided by objective principles of the ethics of responsibility.