Enchantment vs. Disenchantment in Medical Progress: Four Perspectives
Moderator-
Jonathan Imber, PhD., Jean Glasscock Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College
Panelists-
Rolf Bouma, UM Program in the Environment, Pastor for Academic Ministries, Campus Chapel
Raymond De Vries, Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School
David Schenck, Director of the Ethics Program, Medical University of South Carolina
Bryan Turner, Sociology, CUNY
The idea of the “disenchantment of the world” is one of the centerpieces of Max Weber’s theory of modernity. Four discussants will offer both differing and complementary perspectives on whether or not there is a path out of Weber’s “iron cage” of disenchantment toward, in particular, re-enchantment in medicine. The first discussant will examine how Christian theology historically has been much exercised by its efforts to understand and explain suffering. Geriatric medicine promises to allow us not only to live longer (in fact indefinitely) but also without suffering. But to achieve these two goals, it has radically to change the human body through the promise of cloning, cryonics, fetal surgery, gene therapy, nano-technological implants, organ transplants, stem-cell research, and most recently reproduction without eggs. Does this remove suffering? Is it the basis in scientific progress of re-enchantment? The second discussant addresses the increased medical presence at birth and death and the emergence of movements and counter-movements seeking to promote “good” birth and death. These are movements that represent both forward-looking and backward-looking attempts to re-enchant life at these fundamental edges in the face of ever-greater evidence of disenchantment. The third discussant takes a more pessimistic perspective arguing that disenchantment has everything to do with the refusal of limits, accounting for the rationalization and intellectualization of the world from Weber’s perspective. The question is asked if everything can be controlled by calculation, where does re-enchantment begin? How might a science and medical science of limits create the grounds for such a beginning? The fourth discussant maintains that moral psychology has rediscovered the role of the affections in shaping and directing our moral life. Our affections are themselves susceptible to being shaped and directed, a truth long understood in religion as it uses liturgies and religious practices to identify what is sacred and to mold our responses to it. These insights have been appropriated, both for good and for ill, in fields as diverse as politics and environmental activism, and can likewise be applied to medical practice as a basis for it re-enchantment. As Wendell Berry has asserted, “[t]here are no unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places”, and a similar assertion should be made for human life and health. In summary, this panel proposes different ways to think about and argue for the balance between enchantment and disenchantment.
Jonathan Imber, PhD., Jean Glasscock Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College
Panelists-
Rolf Bouma, UM Program in the Environment, Pastor for Academic Ministries, Campus Chapel
Raymond De Vries, Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School
David Schenck, Director of the Ethics Program, Medical University of South Carolina
Bryan Turner, Sociology, CUNY
The idea of the “disenchantment of the world” is one of the centerpieces of Max Weber’s theory of modernity. Four discussants will offer both differing and complementary perspectives on whether or not there is a path out of Weber’s “iron cage” of disenchantment toward, in particular, re-enchantment in medicine. The first discussant will examine how Christian theology historically has been much exercised by its efforts to understand and explain suffering. Geriatric medicine promises to allow us not only to live longer (in fact indefinitely) but also without suffering. But to achieve these two goals, it has radically to change the human body through the promise of cloning, cryonics, fetal surgery, gene therapy, nano-technological implants, organ transplants, stem-cell research, and most recently reproduction without eggs. Does this remove suffering? Is it the basis in scientific progress of re-enchantment? The second discussant addresses the increased medical presence at birth and death and the emergence of movements and counter-movements seeking to promote “good” birth and death. These are movements that represent both forward-looking and backward-looking attempts to re-enchant life at these fundamental edges in the face of ever-greater evidence of disenchantment. The third discussant takes a more pessimistic perspective arguing that disenchantment has everything to do with the refusal of limits, accounting for the rationalization and intellectualization of the world from Weber’s perspective. The question is asked if everything can be controlled by calculation, where does re-enchantment begin? How might a science and medical science of limits create the grounds for such a beginning? The fourth discussant maintains that moral psychology has rediscovered the role of the affections in shaping and directing our moral life. Our affections are themselves susceptible to being shaped and directed, a truth long understood in religion as it uses liturgies and religious practices to identify what is sacred and to mold our responses to it. These insights have been appropriated, both for good and for ill, in fields as diverse as politics and environmental activism, and can likewise be applied to medical practice as a basis for it re-enchantment. As Wendell Berry has asserted, “[t]here are no unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places”, and a similar assertion should be made for human life and health. In summary, this panel proposes different ways to think about and argue for the balance between enchantment and disenchantment.