Matter of Breath : Foundations for Professional Ethics

This book submits for discussion the first results of an undertaking that is still going on. It aims to stimulate a broad reflection on the general question of the meaning of ethics and ethics teaching in the context of professional practice. In doing so, it explores what might be called the transverse foundations of professional ethics.

The authors, all of them philosophers engaged in educating future professionals, took the risk of putting forward a vision which is more inspirational than informative. Their approach to ethics is in-depth and wide-ranging, appropriate to what ethics is : a positive, creative dynamic, less concerned with respecting certain rules or applying certain procedures than with the inventive significance of a sensible practice or a meaningful life, both for individuals and for institutions or societies as a whole.

This volume, then, is offered primarily as an instrument and source of inspiration (and perhaps also as course material) for anyone involved in ethics education who wants to reflect on professional life and to conceive their courses as going beyond a narrowly deontological, pragmatic or informative point of view.