Prophecy Amidst Polarization: Evaluating the Role of Religious Language in Bioethics
Farr Curlin, MD, Duke, Abram Brummett, PhD, HEC-C, Oakland University, Jason Eberl, PhD, Saint Louis University, Brett McCarty, ThD, MDiv, Duke, and Cat Tran, Duke
Bioethics was born of theologically informed voices critiquing a reductionistic account of the human person in medicine. The field gained widespread acceptance as it moved to a secular discourse and the proper role of religious perspectives in bioethics has been debated since. There is no question that the expression of religious perspectives on bioethical issues should be permitted, what is debated is what role, if any, religious perspectives should play in justifying answers to questions of bioethics (e.g., how to define abortifacient interventions, whether to legalize euthanasia, what forms of treatment are appropriate in cases of gender dysphoria, whether the poor and/or marginalized are to be prioritized in health care, etc.). The moderator, a physician and bioethicist, will begin with brief framing comments describing the history of this debate and its current state.
The first speaker, a philosopher and bioethicist, will argue that public reason is the appropriate mode of justification in bioethics based upon several considerations. First, medicine serves a morally pluralistic public with divergent religious and philosophical worldviews. Second, medical professionals act in a public role by wielding professional authority licensed and regulated by the state. Third, public funding deepens public accountability by providing justifying reasons grounded in reciprocity rather than private doctrine. Fourth, public reason protects trust and fairness by ensuring that professional guidance rests on standards shared across the medical community and accessible to patients of all backgrounds. Finally, public reason fosters legitimate consensus, allowing medicine to function as a profession serving the whole public, while leaving room for individuals and traditions to interpret bioethical norms through their private reasons.
The second speaker, a clinical ethicist, will argue for a “connected” view of public and private reasons. While public reason discourse should first be attempted, private reasons may be invoked when public reason discourse stalls. Specifically, the method of “immanent critique” can be used to advance otherwise stalled discourse by inviting interlocutors to first expressing their deeper private reasons for or against a controversial issue—reasons that can be derived directly from their respective comprehensive doctrines, and then subjecting those reasons to arguments showing whether they are either incoherent or support a different conclusion than was supposed. Importantly, there must always be an accompanying public justification the private reasons are used to support; moral justification in bioethics cannot rely solely on private reasons. Examples of immanent critique in bioethics will be provided.
The third speaker, a theologian working from ordinary language philosophy, steps back and asks about public/private distinctions in our language, and whether those distinctions are sufficient for handling the difficulties bioethics deals with (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, identity). It will be found that indeed the confusions tend to go the other way—confusions in our talk about public/private in bioethics confuses everyday talk about public/private. Both have the effect of replacing difficulties of reality with difficulties of philosophy (as if bioethics deals in simulacra in order to evade dealing with embodied human life—bodies that birth, or don’t, bodies that die, or don’t, bodies as persons, or not, etc.). Ultimately one discovers that questions about the proper place of religious language in bioethics take their cues from political liberal arrangements (i.e., public reason) that on the one hand distort the very moral resources needed for bioethics and on the other provoke Christian nationalisms desperate for different politics.
The final speaker, a theological ethicist and qualitative researcher, will argue for the importance of robust moral communities engaging with one another in public and particularistic ways to discern and pursue shared goods. Drawing from philosopher Charles Taylor’s account of moral articulacy, this presentation argues that there is a need to draw from the deep wells of particular moral traditions to understand and pursue the goods of bodily care. If health care’s moral commitments are being eroded by scientific technocrats and profit-seeking bureaucrats, and if those moral commitments have religious roots, then the renewal of modern medicine may depend upon the recovery of distinctive religious visions. Drawing from theological ethicist Luke Bretherton’s Resurrecting Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the speaker will conclude by arguing for the importance of moral agents formed by particularistic communities (religious and otherwise) learning to navigate their differences in public as they seek to discern and pursue the goods of health care together.
The first speaker, a philosopher and bioethicist, will argue that public reason is the appropriate mode of justification in bioethics based upon several considerations. First, medicine serves a morally pluralistic public with divergent religious and philosophical worldviews. Second, medical professionals act in a public role by wielding professional authority licensed and regulated by the state. Third, public funding deepens public accountability by providing justifying reasons grounded in reciprocity rather than private doctrine. Fourth, public reason protects trust and fairness by ensuring that professional guidance rests on standards shared across the medical community and accessible to patients of all backgrounds. Finally, public reason fosters legitimate consensus, allowing medicine to function as a profession serving the whole public, while leaving room for individuals and traditions to interpret bioethical norms through their private reasons.
The second speaker, a clinical ethicist, will argue for a “connected” view of public and private reasons. While public reason discourse should first be attempted, private reasons may be invoked when public reason discourse stalls. Specifically, the method of “immanent critique” can be used to advance otherwise stalled discourse by inviting interlocutors to first expressing their deeper private reasons for or against a controversial issue—reasons that can be derived directly from their respective comprehensive doctrines, and then subjecting those reasons to arguments showing whether they are either incoherent or support a different conclusion than was supposed. Importantly, there must always be an accompanying public justification the private reasons are used to support; moral justification in bioethics cannot rely solely on private reasons. Examples of immanent critique in bioethics will be provided.
The third speaker, a theologian working from ordinary language philosophy, steps back and asks about public/private distinctions in our language, and whether those distinctions are sufficient for handling the difficulties bioethics deals with (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, identity). It will be found that indeed the confusions tend to go the other way—confusions in our talk about public/private in bioethics confuses everyday talk about public/private. Both have the effect of replacing difficulties of reality with difficulties of philosophy (as if bioethics deals in simulacra in order to evade dealing with embodied human life—bodies that birth, or don’t, bodies that die, or don’t, bodies as persons, or not, etc.). Ultimately one discovers that questions about the proper place of religious language in bioethics take their cues from political liberal arrangements (i.e., public reason) that on the one hand distort the very moral resources needed for bioethics and on the other provoke Christian nationalisms desperate for different politics.
The final speaker, a theological ethicist and qualitative researcher, will argue for the importance of robust moral communities engaging with one another in public and particularistic ways to discern and pursue shared goods. Drawing from philosopher Charles Taylor’s account of moral articulacy, this presentation argues that there is a need to draw from the deep wells of particular moral traditions to understand and pursue the goods of bodily care. If health care’s moral commitments are being eroded by scientific technocrats and profit-seeking bureaucrats, and if those moral commitments have religious roots, then the renewal of modern medicine may depend upon the recovery of distinctive religious visions. Drawing from theological ethicist Luke Bretherton’s Resurrecting Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), the speaker will conclude by arguing for the importance of moral agents formed by particularistic communities (religious and otherwise) learning to navigate their differences in public as they seek to discern and pursue the goods of health care together.