Four key themes
Thematically, Lethica has selected four major contemporary issues, to be explored in the long term, alternatively or consecutively, and meant to give way to interdisciplinary programs and specific topics of investigation. Those themes were the issues of triage, moral revolutions, transparency and secrecy, and case making and caring. Lethica thus intends to address pressing societal challenges, such as the spread of a sorting paradigm (“triage”) from military medicine to emergency medicine, humanitarian aid and a number of economical, social and geopolitical relations; the proliferation and acceleration of moral revolutions, as a consequence of globalization and mediatization, as well as the subsequent multiplication of ethical conflicts within or between western and non-western societies; the public and democratic call for transparency, which tends to be constrained by political strategies and economic interests; the expansion of new paradigms and ethical issues (vulnerability, durability) regarding new situations and conditions for human and animal life (bioethics, animal ethics).
- The question of "triage": operations of classification, selection, prioritisation or neglect in health, employment, training, humanitarian and emergency medicine policies.
- The question of "moral revolutions": changes in social opinions and behaviour regarding practices that were long considered "normal" and are now condemned.
- The question of "transparency and secrecy" : the choice of making public or keeping hidden information, decisions or actions.
- The question of ways of "making case and caring": articulation of the singular and the general with a heuristic or therapeutic aim.
