Politics of Human Life

<p>This book centres on the notion of human life that lies at the foundation of contemporary thinking in the areas of ethics law and politics.</p><p>Centrally the book addresses the deep divide characteristic of this thinking between: on the one hand those who wish to do away with any anthropological understandings of the human and appeal to mere facts delivered by science; and on the other hand critics who defend an anthropological understanding of human life that is tied to traditional teleological metaphysics. In short: knowledge of the world is given over to the sciences and moral theory is considered to operate in a distinct and insulated domain. But this opposition has Piergiorgio Donatelli argues here outlived its usefulness. Through a discussion of the intimate human spheres of reproduction dying and sexuality he argues that we now live in a world characterized by new ways of living: by novel rearrangements of emotions and by the modification and in some cases a radical rupture in existing ideas of human life. These shifts challenge any established separation between facts and norms between human life and its conceptualization. As such it is argued here they simultaneously offer the possibility of a new socially articulated understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and normativity.</p><p>Engaging pressing contemporary themes this book will be invaluable to scholars in the fields of ethics law and political theory and both analytic and continental philosophy.</p>