Disability and the Need for Theological Anthropology in Medicine
Jason Whitt, Ph.D., Associate Director, Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor University
This presentation will argue that a theological anthropology informed by reflection upon the lives of people with profound intellectual disability will reveal the implicit anthropology dominant in contemporary medicine. The largely unacknowledged medical anthropology emphasizes rationality and autonomy as the necessary characteristics for a well-lived life. In contrast, a theological anthropology, reflecting the commitment of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions that life is fundamentally gift, offers an account of personhood that affirms the full diversity of human being. Because of this, a theological anthropology will challenge regnant accounts of human flourishing that undergird moral decision-making in contemporary practices of medicine.
Every anthropology provides a vision of a flourishing human life. Moreover, the vision functions primarily below the level of conscious reflection, in pictures, stories, and imagination more than in propositions or reasoned accounts. In Desiring the Kingdom, James K. A. Smith offers this axiom: behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology. He contends that in contemporary higher education the dominant anthropology imagines humans as primarily rational beings, so that educational practices aim at the conveyance of information. What is missed, Smith argues, is that humans are also embodied beings that are formed to a much greater degree by the habits and practices that orient our affective nature, because these give the picture of the good life that constitutes our anthropology. The images of the good life that are formed below the conscious, rational surface are the drivers of human action. Moral decision-making and moral acting are more often the product of these received images of human good rather than conscious reflection.
Students initiated into the field of medicine through medical school and residency receive an anthropology that affirms reason and autonomy as the fundamental characteristics of human being, and as such are marks of a flourishing human life. These lessons are never explicit, but instead are learned through the multitude of practices that constitute the daily habituation of medical practice into a student’s repertoire of skills. Within such a context, those whose lives do not have the capacity for self-determination or autonomy cannot help but be viewed as less than desirable. In this, then, the received anthropological imagination is the basis for moral decision-making about treatment, care, and goals in the daily practice of medicine.
However, how might the anthropological imagination be reshaped by encounters with people with intellectual disability during medical training? What differences would there be in approaches to beginning-of-life and end-of-life care, understandings of health and well-being, goals for treatment, and support for caregivers through the influence of theological anthropologies oriented by the image of life as gift? To what extent would education in theological anthropologies help name and reveal the implicit anthropology dominant in contemporary medicine, an account that inherently denies the goodness of life for those with disabilities? This presentation will seek to address these questions and suggest that engagement with theological anthropologies will reshape the moral imagination of physicians to see the possibility of flourishing in the diverse ways of human being.
This presentation will argue that a theological anthropology informed by reflection upon the lives of people with profound intellectual disability will reveal the implicit anthropology dominant in contemporary medicine. The largely unacknowledged medical anthropology emphasizes rationality and autonomy as the necessary characteristics for a well-lived life. In contrast, a theological anthropology, reflecting the commitment of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions that life is fundamentally gift, offers an account of personhood that affirms the full diversity of human being. Because of this, a theological anthropology will challenge regnant accounts of human flourishing that undergird moral decision-making in contemporary practices of medicine.
Every anthropology provides a vision of a flourishing human life. Moreover, the vision functions primarily below the level of conscious reflection, in pictures, stories, and imagination more than in propositions or reasoned accounts. In Desiring the Kingdom, James K. A. Smith offers this axiom: behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology. He contends that in contemporary higher education the dominant anthropology imagines humans as primarily rational beings, so that educational practices aim at the conveyance of information. What is missed, Smith argues, is that humans are also embodied beings that are formed to a much greater degree by the habits and practices that orient our affective nature, because these give the picture of the good life that constitutes our anthropology. The images of the good life that are formed below the conscious, rational surface are the drivers of human action. Moral decision-making and moral acting are more often the product of these received images of human good rather than conscious reflection.
Students initiated into the field of medicine through medical school and residency receive an anthropology that affirms reason and autonomy as the fundamental characteristics of human being, and as such are marks of a flourishing human life. These lessons are never explicit, but instead are learned through the multitude of practices that constitute the daily habituation of medical practice into a student’s repertoire of skills. Within such a context, those whose lives do not have the capacity for self-determination or autonomy cannot help but be viewed as less than desirable. In this, then, the received anthropological imagination is the basis for moral decision-making about treatment, care, and goals in the daily practice of medicine.
However, how might the anthropological imagination be reshaped by encounters with people with intellectual disability during medical training? What differences would there be in approaches to beginning-of-life and end-of-life care, understandings of health and well-being, goals for treatment, and support for caregivers through the influence of theological anthropologies oriented by the image of life as gift? To what extent would education in theological anthropologies help name and reveal the implicit anthropology dominant in contemporary medicine, an account that inherently denies the goodness of life for those with disabilities? This presentation will seek to address these questions and suggest that engagement with theological anthropologies will reshape the moral imagination of physicians to see the possibility of flourishing in the diverse ways of human being.