Health and Human Flourishing: Religion, Medicine, and Moral Anthropology
Books / Paperback
Books › Religion › Christianity › Catholic
ISBN: 1589010795 / Publisher: Georgetown University Press, June 2006
Arguing that "the engagement of medicine with religion and moral anthropology betrays an understanding of bioethics that pushes the boundary of current discussions, mainly focused on questions of harms, benefit, patient autonomy, and the equality of health care distribution" towards a understanding of the basis of human flourishing, Taylor (director, Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown U.) and Dell'Oro (The Bioethics Institute, Loyola Marymount U.) present 14 essays that collectively seek to describe the bioethics of human flourishing by exploring the historical and contextual dimensions of ethical discourse and on the neglected phenomenological meaning of specific realms of human moral experience. Papers address methodological issues; the meanings of dignity and integrity; the question of vulnerability; "relationality" in dimensions of sexual and social anthropology; and the relation between theological anthropology and the realms of health care, policy, and science. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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What, exactly, does it mean to be human? It is an age-old question, one for which theology, philosophy, science, and medicine have all provided different answers. But though a unified response to the question can no longer be taken for granted, how we answer it frames the wide range of different norms, principles, values, and intuitions that characterize today's bioethical discussions. If we don't know what it means to be human, how can we judge whether biomedical sciences threaten or enhance our humanity?This fundamental question, however, receives little attention in the study of bioethics. In a field consumed with the promises and perils of new medical discoveries, emerging technologies, and unprecedented social change, current conversations about bioethics focus primarily on questions of harm and benefit, patient autonomy, and equality of health care distribution. Prevailing models of medical ethics emphasize human capacity for self-control and self-determination, rarely considering such inescapable dimensions of the human condition as disability, loss, and suffering, community and dignity, all of which make it difficult for us to be truly independent.In Health and Human Flourishing, contributors from a wide range of disciplines mine the intersection of the secular and the religious, the medical and the moral, to unearth the ethical and clinical implications of these facets of human existence. Their aim is a richer bioethics, one that takes into account the roles of vulnerability, dignity, integrity, and relationality in human affliction as well as human thriving. Including an examination of how a theological anthropology—a theological understanding of what it means to be a human being—can help us better understand health care, social policy, and science, this thought-provoking anthology will inspire much-needed conversation among philosophers, theologians, and health care professionals.
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