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This book presents an inquiry into the sort of creatures we are. If we don’t know what we are, we can have no idea how to behave or thrive either as individuals or as a society. This book, in a series of short essays, addresses the most fundamental question facing each of us: We are not here long: how then should we live – as individuals and as members of society? Philosophers and lawyers have long asked the question, but their answers are often garbled, and they have not learned a language in which to talk to one another. The Academy, which should lead the debate, is often too riddled with presumption and systemic dysfunction to be either useful or interesting. Foster surveys the academic and legal landscape critically, and suggests how some of the ills can be remedied.
This book positively fizzes with intellectual firepower. Witty, subversive and a delight to read, the chapters cover a huge range of topics in relation to philosophy and the law, always with a deep sense of what it means to be a fully embodied human being with a rich embeddedness in life. — Dr Iain McGilchrist, Author of The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things.
Snappy, witty and insightful. This book offers fascinating observations on law, ethics and how to be a human being. Often provocative, always stimulating, Foster encourages us to break free from the binds of modern life and set ourselves free. — Jonathan Herring, DM Wolfe-Clarendon Fellow in Law, Exeter College, University of Oxford.
This is a funny, insightful, provocative and always interesting series of vignettes on a broad range of issues. It covers medical law, bioethics and many topics beyond, but consistently leaves the reader wanting to read ‘just one more’ chapter. — Professor José Miola, Chair in Health Law and Deputy Head of School, Leicester Law School, University of Leicester.
Charles Foster is a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford; a member of the Oxford Law Faculty; and a practicing barrister. His books include the New York Times bestseller, Being a Beast. He has been involved as a barrister in many of the crucial cases in medical law, including the assisted suicide litigation in the U.K. Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
Acknowledgements; Original Sources; Table of Cases; Table of Legislation and Other Instruments; Introduction; One; Two-Religion and Metaphysics; Three-Epistemology and Intuitions; Four-Identity; Five-Freedom; Six-Human Value and Disability; Seven-Human Enhancement; Eight-Genetics; Nine-Animals and Aliens; Ten-Sexual Ethics; Eleven-Abortion and Other Questions of Reproductive Ethics; Twelve-Culture; Thirteen-Brexit; Fourteen-Technology; Fifteen-Research Ethics; Sixteen-Pandemic Ethics; Seventeen-Consent to Medical Treatment; Eighteen-End-of-Life Decision-Making; Nineteen-Environmental Issues; Twenty-The Business of the Law; Twenty-One-Ethics and Law; Twenty-Two-Afterword; Notes; Index