Ockham Publishing – förlag

We live in a remarkable world: science and technology has shifted our understanding of what''s possible and transformed our lives. Rain dances and sun worshipping have been replaced by quantum computers, speed-of-light rockets, and our ever-closer inching towards genuine artificial intelligence.But somehow, more and more of us are feeling hopeless; we are still ruled by political systems that haven''t hugely changed since they fell into place hundreds, arguably thousands, of years ago. The part of our society that makes decisions on everything from our health to our work is almost completely dysfunctional.Politicians aren''t held to account by truth, aren''t striving for shared visions of human thriving, and are allowed to mix and mash their policies based upon sound bites and media furores rather than actually progressing humankind. All the while having to focus on short-term goals rather than sustainable ideas.How Moral Philosophy Broke Politics argues that a rational, evidence-based framework for ethics can be developed, by drawing all of our moral opinions back to three basic principles that underlie all of our concerns. By doing this we can rationally judge and weigh new policies and decisions in a way which is accountable and, whilst still debatable, much easier to find consensus on.If we were to accept this new framework then we would be much better off not just in politics, but in all those areas of life which politics affects. The world has changed unrecognisably in the last thousand years, whilst politics hasn''t changed much at all. We need to start using reason to develop it into something useful.

We all rely on doctors and they go through one of the most vigorous training regimes on the planet, but it wasn''t always this way.The tremendous scale of medical ethics which now exists has benefited doctors and wider society, but few know how these rules came to be.Andreas-Holger Maehle, Professor of History of Medicine and Medical Ethics at Durham University''s Department of Philosophy, Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease, and Wolfson Research Institute, has written this engaging and often riveting history of British medical ethics.From communication with patients all the way through to hard moral choices, this book will provoke debate amongst doctors, nurses, lawyers, academics and other interested people all around the world.