  Perhaps the most exciting and variegated explorations of the relation between identity and ethics are taking place in the arena  of applied ethics, specifically in medical ethics and bioethics.  These typically involve attempts to chart the relation between some  clear-cut person and either an earlier or later entity “at the  margins of life.” We will here discuss the two main arenas of  such research before briefly noting the sorts of debates about  identity and applied ethics taking place in other arenas.