The Telos of Healthcare: Retrieving Aquinas’s Work on Health as a Habit
Lindsey Johnson Edwards, PhD Student, Religious Studies program, Southern Methodist University
Does Medicine have a telos, a supreme end that informs its practices, aims, and intentions? In Jos V.M. Welie’s In the Face of Suffering: The Philosophical-Anthropological Foundations of Clinical Ethics, Welie summarizes the ultimate end or “single undisputable goal” of clinical medicine in just two words: “postponing death.” Explaining the rise of this phenomenon, Welie asserts, “Postponing death has become the single most important criterion of good medical treatment. Although many health care providers stress that the patients' well being is equally important, the biomedical sciences as a whole remain structured around the goal of postponing death.” Welie observes that as medicine and healthcare have shifted their ultimate goal toward the postponement of death, the enterprise has moved further away from the goal of maintaining one’s health. Why is this the case? Welie posits that it could boil down to this distinction: postponing death is a measurable, objective goal, whereas cultivating “the good” of health or well-being is far more complicated and subjective. Like Stanley Hauerwas and Robert Sokolowski, Welie observes that medicine is leaving behind its complex role as a moral art, which aims to contribute to the good of the holistic patient, in favor of a purely scientific approach to healthcare. Yet one must wonder what is lost in this reductionist approach to medicine, specifically this model of healthcare that is far more concerned with postponing death than stewarding the gift of life. In other words, what is healthcare failing to provide patients when it is diminished to a mere problem-solver?
In this paper, I will argue that retrieving Thomas Aquinas’s notion of health as a habitus reclaims the teleologically formative role of healthcare. This paper will unfold in three parts. First, I will succinctly explicate Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of habitus and moral progress. This section will underscore the relationship between cultivating and habituating virtue in accordance with seeking imperfect happiness in the current, embodied condition. Second, I will exegete Aquinas’s work on health as a habit, highlighting the morally formative activities associated with health and how these practices reorient the patient toward their ultimate end. Lastly, building upon Aquinas’s notion of health as a habit, I will propose reassessing the prevalent ends of healthcare in order to better care for the patient as a holistic person journeying toward their fulfillment. This concluding section will illustrate that though there are limitations to medical science, viewing health and healthcare as a moral, formative activity engenders new possibilities for the support offered by clinical healthcare practitioners.
1 Jos V. M. Welie, In the Face of Suffering the Philosophical-Anthropological Foundations of Clinical Ethics (Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 1998), 246.
2 Welie, In the Face of Suffering, 246-247.
3 Welie, In the Face of Suffering, 259.
4 Stanley Hauerwas and Robert Sokolowski’s work will be revisited and explicated in the third section of this paper. Like Welie, both Christian ethicists have noted the loss of medicine as an art in the midst of the rise medical technologies and interventions.
5 Throughout this paper I will utilize the terms healthcare, clinical care, clinical healthcare, and clinical medicine interchangeably. Though many of these terms can be distinguished, in this paper I am using them all to refer specifically to healthcare that is undertaken in the clinical context.
In this paper, I will argue that retrieving Thomas Aquinas’s notion of health as a habitus reclaims the teleologically formative role of healthcare. This paper will unfold in three parts. First, I will succinctly explicate Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of habitus and moral progress. This section will underscore the relationship between cultivating and habituating virtue in accordance with seeking imperfect happiness in the current, embodied condition. Second, I will exegete Aquinas’s work on health as a habit, highlighting the morally formative activities associated with health and how these practices reorient the patient toward their ultimate end. Lastly, building upon Aquinas’s notion of health as a habit, I will propose reassessing the prevalent ends of healthcare in order to better care for the patient as a holistic person journeying toward their fulfillment. This concluding section will illustrate that though there are limitations to medical science, viewing health and healthcare as a moral, formative activity engenders new possibilities for the support offered by clinical healthcare practitioners.
1 Jos V. M. Welie, In the Face of Suffering the Philosophical-Anthropological Foundations of Clinical Ethics (Omaha, NE: Creighton University Press, 1998), 246.
2 Welie, In the Face of Suffering, 246-247.
3 Welie, In the Face of Suffering, 259.
4 Stanley Hauerwas and Robert Sokolowski’s work will be revisited and explicated in the third section of this paper. Like Welie, both Christian ethicists have noted the loss of medicine as an art in the midst of the rise medical technologies and interventions.
5 Throughout this paper I will utilize the terms healthcare, clinical care, clinical healthcare, and clinical medicine interchangeably. Though many of these terms can be distinguished, in this paper I am using them all to refer specifically to healthcare that is undertaken in the clinical context.