FAMILY

The basic principle of the family, as it is of the state and the economy, is the intersubjective, the consideration of the other as an end and not only as a means, according to Kant’s second categorical imperative.

"Act in such a way that you need humanity, both in your own person and in the person of each other, at all times as an end, never merely as a means. " (translation by the authors)

(Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 1785, in: I. Kant, Akademie Ausgabe, Berlin 1900 ff., vol. IV, p. 429).

This recognition of others as an end in themselves is ’friendship’ (without the intention of reproduction) and, in its most developed form, it is ’love’ (with the intention of reproduction). There are of course several stages in between, but these are the two main forms of family interpersonal recognition.

Compared to friendship, love implies the common decision to give birth to other human beings, that is, to create other future parents. In this way, love, understood precisely as such a decision of procreation, enables the survival of humanity and is therefore essential for life itself. It is by no means a random phenomenon of life.

There is an intermediate stage between friendship and true, authentic love; that is passion, romantic love. It consists in the desire to possess the other individual, who is seen as the source of all kinds of subjective happiness. Passion is an essential element of true love as its beginning, its origin. Love can only be born from passion, yet it is by no means safe that a passion becomes love, i.e. a conscious decision to create other future parents, other people. A person can certainly have several passions in his or her life, but very few or often only one true love, i.e. only one or very few of the passions lead to a common decision to bear children and thus to create a family.

The family, as it is wanted by nature, which we humans are a part of, is based on the diversity of the sexes and therefore the family is formed by a man and a woman. Understanding why nature has determined that exactly man and woman are capable of bringing children into the world is beyond our cognitive abilities. Of course, through science and technology, humans can intervene in the course of nature, always respecting its principles of order, and, for example, can transform a man into a woman or vice versa, so that homosexual love becomes capable of bearing children as well.

The essence of any intervention to enable reproduction in the face of obstacles of any kind is always that the unborn child is guaranteed the absolute right to know its parents and to be able to trace them if necessary. This should be an inalienable right of the newborn child.

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COSMOPOLITAN FAMILY - ROOMS and INTERPRETATION

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