The Suffering Body and the Significance of Presence
Autumn Ridenour, PhD, Assistant Professor, Merrimack College
Jeffrey Bishop’s THE ANTICIPATORY CORPSE disrupted the bioethical and medical ethics scene by asking whether the goals and practices of modern medicine are not themselves corrupt. In a deconstructive diagnosis of modern medicine, he argues that not only does individualism and autonomous decision-making reign supreme, but the goals that drive medicine, namely efficient and material causation, lack formal and final purposes for which to order medical practice. Efficiency by way of “controlling matter” and biological processes becomes the primary focus of western medicine in its desire to stave off disease and suffering. Ironically, however, the cadaver - or dead body - remains the central tool from which knowledge is transposed onto the living body. Bishop’s provocative conclusion asks whether only theology might save medicine. His analysis implicitly asks medicine and theology about the central role of the body and its suffering. What exactly are these suffering bodies we inhabit and what is the role of suffering in terms of human identity and meaning?
In an interesting response to Bishop, Brett McCarty offers a “second opinion” in which he describes Bishop’s diagnosis as incomplete in its holistic critique of modern medicine where “the purposes of life [and possibly suffering and death] may be present and enduring, though perhaps hidden, in the modern practice of medicine.” Like McCarty, this paper aims to respond to Bishop’s thesis by turning both to the Christian tradition in its view of suffering and the human body as well as those implicit or “hidden” purposes within the practice of medicine that care for the suffering body through presence. In order to demonstrate both Christian theology and medicine’s divergence and convergence through practice, I first describe the meaning of suffering for the Christian tradition and medicine as both undesirable pain and natural change. Second, I consider the meaning of hope imbedded in the Christian narrative in its desire for transformation beyond our mechanistic aims at controlling nature. Finally, I turn to the significance of grief and the practice of presence as an original goal of Christian love as well as the best of medicine’s care in the face of suffering.
Jeffrey Bishop’s THE ANTICIPATORY CORPSE disrupted the bioethical and medical ethics scene by asking whether the goals and practices of modern medicine are not themselves corrupt. In a deconstructive diagnosis of modern medicine, he argues that not only does individualism and autonomous decision-making reign supreme, but the goals that drive medicine, namely efficient and material causation, lack formal and final purposes for which to order medical practice. Efficiency by way of “controlling matter” and biological processes becomes the primary focus of western medicine in its desire to stave off disease and suffering. Ironically, however, the cadaver - or dead body - remains the central tool from which knowledge is transposed onto the living body. Bishop’s provocative conclusion asks whether only theology might save medicine. His analysis implicitly asks medicine and theology about the central role of the body and its suffering. What exactly are these suffering bodies we inhabit and what is the role of suffering in terms of human identity and meaning?
In an interesting response to Bishop, Brett McCarty offers a “second opinion” in which he describes Bishop’s diagnosis as incomplete in its holistic critique of modern medicine where “the purposes of life [and possibly suffering and death] may be present and enduring, though perhaps hidden, in the modern practice of medicine.” Like McCarty, this paper aims to respond to Bishop’s thesis by turning both to the Christian tradition in its view of suffering and the human body as well as those implicit or “hidden” purposes within the practice of medicine that care for the suffering body through presence. In order to demonstrate both Christian theology and medicine’s divergence and convergence through practice, I first describe the meaning of suffering for the Christian tradition and medicine as both undesirable pain and natural change. Second, I consider the meaning of hope imbedded in the Christian narrative in its desire for transformation beyond our mechanistic aims at controlling nature. Finally, I turn to the significance of grief and the practice of presence as an original goal of Christian love as well as the best of medicine’s care in the face of suffering.