Undermining the Cartesian Foundations of Modern Medicine: Descartes, Thomas Aquinas, and the Human Body
Warren Kinghorn, MD, ThD, Associate Research Professor of Psychiatry and Pastoral and Moral Theology, Duke University Medical Center and Duke Divinity School
In an age of brain science, modern health care practitioners are often eager to reject any appearance of Rene Descartes' dualism of mind and body. But avoiding Cartesian dualism is more than simply affirming that human thinking is embodied; it is also necessary to reject the presumption that the body is a kind of machine that can be manipulated in a way that renders scientists and practitioners, in Descartes' words, the "lords and possessors of nature." In this presentation, drawing from Descartes’ philosophical and scientific writings as well as from secondary Descartes scholarship, I will argue that Descartes should best be understood not primarily as a “philosopher of mind” but rather as aspiring medical research scientist “endeavoring to acquire some knowledge of Nature, which shall be of such a kind as to enable us therefrom to deduce rules in medicine of greater certainty than those at present in use.” Descartes’ mind-body substance dualism, far from being the apex of his life work, functions theologically and morally to justify his medical investigations: the _res cogitans_, knowing and immortal, is the repository of human dignity and distinctiveness, while the body, devoid of language and knowledge, is a machine and therefore appropriate for experimentation and manipulation. I will argue that Descartes’ dualistic view of the body as a machine continues to inform modern medical practice even among clinicians and researchers who do not think that they are “Cartesians,” and continues to impoverish modern health care by perpetuating the use of mechanical rather than vital/animate metaphors for the human body, by denying that bodies can “know,” by situating human dignity and unique personal identity in the mind/soul rather than in the body, and by encouraging depersonalized programs of research, diagnosis, and therapy. I then offer a Christian theological counterpoint to Descartes’ failed Christian scientific project. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas, I argue that the human should not be understood as a machine with an “annexed” soul, but rather as an ensouled, embodied wayfarer journeying to God. A Thomistic approach to the wayfarer’s journey entails not simply the rejection of substance dualism, but also the rejection of the machine metaphor of the body. In place of a Cartesian rendering of the body as a machine to be observed and controlled, I conclude with a broadly Thomistic rendering of the body as the material display of the soul, shaping the wayfarer’s journey, and of medicine as a practice of attending to wayfarers.
In an age of brain science, modern health care practitioners are often eager to reject any appearance of Rene Descartes' dualism of mind and body. But avoiding Cartesian dualism is more than simply affirming that human thinking is embodied; it is also necessary to reject the presumption that the body is a kind of machine that can be manipulated in a way that renders scientists and practitioners, in Descartes' words, the "lords and possessors of nature." In this presentation, drawing from Descartes’ philosophical and scientific writings as well as from secondary Descartes scholarship, I will argue that Descartes should best be understood not primarily as a “philosopher of mind” but rather as aspiring medical research scientist “endeavoring to acquire some knowledge of Nature, which shall be of such a kind as to enable us therefrom to deduce rules in medicine of greater certainty than those at present in use.” Descartes’ mind-body substance dualism, far from being the apex of his life work, functions theologically and morally to justify his medical investigations: the _res cogitans_, knowing and immortal, is the repository of human dignity and distinctiveness, while the body, devoid of language and knowledge, is a machine and therefore appropriate for experimentation and manipulation. I will argue that Descartes’ dualistic view of the body as a machine continues to inform modern medical practice even among clinicians and researchers who do not think that they are “Cartesians,” and continues to impoverish modern health care by perpetuating the use of mechanical rather than vital/animate metaphors for the human body, by denying that bodies can “know,” by situating human dignity and unique personal identity in the mind/soul rather than in the body, and by encouraging depersonalized programs of research, diagnosis, and therapy. I then offer a Christian theological counterpoint to Descartes’ failed Christian scientific project. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas, I argue that the human should not be understood as a machine with an “annexed” soul, but rather as an ensouled, embodied wayfarer journeying to God. A Thomistic approach to the wayfarer’s journey entails not simply the rejection of substance dualism, but also the rejection of the machine metaphor of the body. In place of a Cartesian rendering of the body as a machine to be observed and controlled, I conclude with a broadly Thomistic rendering of the body as the material display of the soul, shaping the wayfarer’s journey, and of medicine as a practice of attending to wayfarers.