edited by Sergio De Risio (Catholic University, Italy) & Franco F Orsucci (Catholic University, Italy & Institute for Complexity Studies, Italy)

This publication reviews the foundations of ethics in the history of Western thinking. It connects these philosophical matters with evolutionary theory and contemporary bioethics, biology and medicine, posing new questions for the current dialectics between categorical and contextual ethics. Novel answers are presented from complexity theory — self-organization and nonlinear dynamics.

• On a Possible Foundation of Ethics (S De Risio & C Cuomo)
• In Darwin's Wake, Where Did I Go? (D C Dennett)
• Post-Kantian Problems of an Ethics of the Good Life and the Foundations of Discourse Ethics (K-O Apel)
• Emotion, Metaphor and the Evolution of the Mind (A H Modell)
• Ethos in Action (F F Orsucci)