Interrupting the Determinative Ontology of Medicine: Karl Barth on Embodiment and Flourishing
Ashley Moyse, PhD, Vancouver School of Theology
Jeffrey Bishop has suggested the dominant epistemological orientation and determinative ontology prevailing in medicine is one that grapples with the human body as a machine, as dead matter in motion. That is, with an interest in knowing how the body functions, possess the knowledge of order to maintain such function and to return order from dysfunction, physicians, among other health professionals and scientists, have distanced themselves from the object of study. This is done, as it is argued, to understand it: i.e., to use it, to manipulate it, and, ultimately, to improve upon it. Rather, the Enlightenment project, and the corresponding technocratism has determined the human body as an object to master, necessitating an ontological narrative that renders an identical perspective—in this way the body’s potentiality is turned towards Baconian ends. Without an alternative narrative that is able to challenge the hegemony of moral discourse enslaved to the technological imperative and efficient causation of modern medicine, which simply narrates how we are to die (or live), we will be unable to resist the dominance of control, whether in physiological or ethical form. Accordingly, Gerald McKenny has argued, the result is that incumbent modes of moral discourse in medicine facilitate a naiveté regarding how our moral identities are determined by the ambitions of Baconian medicine. We are left impotent to resist this determination and enlist technology in the service of a responsible and well-lived life. Such a narrative must be interrupted and a catechesis introduced that might transform our understanding of human life, and human flourishing. Karl Barth’s theological anthropology might afford the content for such a catechesis, which invites us to enact a chief posture for human flourishing gathered about the limitation and freedom for human life. Such instruction might enabled us to speak well with and for persons embedded, rather embodied, in community gathered about the peculiarities of biomedical crises.
Jeffrey Bishop has suggested the dominant epistemological orientation and determinative ontology prevailing in medicine is one that grapples with the human body as a machine, as dead matter in motion. That is, with an interest in knowing how the body functions, possess the knowledge of order to maintain such function and to return order from dysfunction, physicians, among other health professionals and scientists, have distanced themselves from the object of study. This is done, as it is argued, to understand it: i.e., to use it, to manipulate it, and, ultimately, to improve upon it. Rather, the Enlightenment project, and the corresponding technocratism has determined the human body as an object to master, necessitating an ontological narrative that renders an identical perspective—in this way the body’s potentiality is turned towards Baconian ends. Without an alternative narrative that is able to challenge the hegemony of moral discourse enslaved to the technological imperative and efficient causation of modern medicine, which simply narrates how we are to die (or live), we will be unable to resist the dominance of control, whether in physiological or ethical form. Accordingly, Gerald McKenny has argued, the result is that incumbent modes of moral discourse in medicine facilitate a naiveté regarding how our moral identities are determined by the ambitions of Baconian medicine. We are left impotent to resist this determination and enlist technology in the service of a responsible and well-lived life. Such a narrative must be interrupted and a catechesis introduced that might transform our understanding of human life, and human flourishing. Karl Barth’s theological anthropology might afford the content for such a catechesis, which invites us to enact a chief posture for human flourishing gathered about the limitation and freedom for human life. Such instruction might enabled us to speak well with and for persons embedded, rather embodied, in community gathered about the peculiarities of biomedical crises.