The Ethical Imagination ─ Journeys of the Human Spirit

Renowned ethicist Margaret Somerville tackles some of the most contentious issues of our time and proposes a brilliant new kind of ethical language and thought to help us deal with them. Somerville asks: What does it mean to be human today, when mind-altering scientific breakthroughs are challenging our fundamental ideas of ourselves, how we relate to others and the world around us, and how we find meaning in life? Touching on such controversial subjects as our growing acceptance of new reproductive technologies and the genetic modification of plants and animals, she argues that only if we are willing to undertake a journey of the human imagination will we be able to see, understand, and relate morally to the world around us, allowing us to develop an ethics to guide us.

Margaret Somerville, who was recently chosen as the first winner of the Avicenna prize for Ethics in Science by UNESCO, is the founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, and holds professorships in both the Faculty of Law and the