Saturday 2 October 2010

Outline of the future and forthcoming books

As some of you may have noticed, I have not posted anything here for a while. Not that I lack things to post, but the main purpose of this blog is not primarily to relay interesting info or news items, but to present my own reactions to various events or phenomena after some amount of due reflection. So the last month or so, a series of deadlines and other duties have impeded me from develop some themes I've been thinking about. Here are some of the topics on which you may be hearing from me in the not too distant future: the "new" European political nationism/racism/etnocentrism, the nature and models of citizenship, liberalism and responsibility, the need for enhancement of human moral capacities.

In addition, I take the opportunity to plug two books that are due to appear next year (that's two of the deadlines I referred to above, both published by Springer (in different series):

 Niklas Juth & Christian Munthe: Serving Society or Serving the Patient? The Ethics of Screening in Health and Medicine. Building on classic works in the field, this book attempts to present a seminal overarching grip on the ethical issues actualised when medical testing methods are proactively offered to great masses of people. Lots of facts and detailed analysis, but we also launch a new model for ethical analysis suitable for this field of medical and health practice, and for other activities which in a similar way overlap different basic sectors of society.

Christian Munthe: The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk. This book presents the first in-depth ethical analysis of the idea of the Precautionary Principle and, in course of that, a seminal approach to the ethical analysis of imposing, preventing and distributing environmental and technological risks.

Stay tuned!