Scientific Project

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.

  Detailed description of the four themes

Four perspectives

In the international context of the COVID 19 pandemic, of recurring terrorist attacks, of disputed democratic elections, Lethica’s selected topics are more than ever relevant ones, and they will be explored in the next 8 years according to four general perspectives: historical approaches, intercultural approaches, as well as the relationships between research and creation and between ethics and therapeutics.

By combining four perspectives, LETHICA thus encompasses a large field of research:
• Ethics must be considered in both a diachronical and synchronical perspective: Lethica will demonstrate that ethics change in time and space, being not only an evolving historical concept (historical perspective) but also a reflection of various cultural contexts (intercultural perspective).
• Ethics shall also be considered as a creative discipline and as a practice (poetic or medical, individual or collective).

  Detailed description of the four methodological and critical perspectives