by JohnJ.Fitzgerald (Editor), Ashley John Moyse (Editor), John J. Fitzgerald (Editor), Ashley John Moyse (Editor)
Modern medicine has produced many wonderful technological breakthroughs that have extended the limits of the frail human body. However, much of the focus of this medical research has been on the physical, often reducing the human being to a biological machine to be examined, understood, and controlled. This book begins by asking whether the modern medical milieu has overly objectified the body, unwittingly or not, and whether current studies in bioethics are up to the task of restoring a fuller understanding of the human person. In response, various authors here suggest that a more theological/religious approach would be helpful, or perhaps even necessary.
Presenting specific perspectives from Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the book is divided into three parts: Understanding the Body, Respecting the Body, and The Body at the End of Life. A panel of expert contributors-including philosophers, physicians, and theologians and scholars of religion- answer key questions such as: What is the relationship between body and soul? What are our obligations toward human bodies? How should medicine respond to suffering and death? The resulting text is an interdisciplinary treatise on how medicine can best function in our societies.
Offering a new way to approach the medical humanities, this book will be of keen interest to any scholars with an interest in contemporary religious perspectives on medicine and the body.
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 264
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 28 May 2019
ISBN 10: 1138484857
ISBN 13: 9781138484856
`Beginning with an unforgettable essay by the immortal Tris Engelhardt, this collection gets down to the serious business of reckoning with the fact that humans are bodies. That plain fact turns out to be the elephant in the room of contemporary bioethics. Bioethicists studiously ignore the elephant, not least because our embodiment exposes the tragic limits of secular liberal assumptions about morality, freedom, and human flourishing. In these wide-ranging essays, the reader will encounter new vistas of moral reasoning that open up when we venture beyond such limits to take the body seriously.' - Farr Curlin, MD, Josiah C. Trent Professor of Medical Humanities, Duke University, USA
`Given a puzzling time in bioethics when we at once seemingly pay more attention to bodies (such as when black and brown bodies are invoked over social justice concerns), but also seemingly deny the significance of bodies (such as our treatment of vulnerable persons with severe brain damage or brain death), this impressive volume--which boasts an impressive and ideologically diverse array of thinkers from across religious traditions-is much needed. Its pages contain precisely the kind of accumulated wisdom required to think through the discipline's current puzzle.' - Charles C. Camosy, Associate Professor of Theological and Social Ethics, Fordham University, USA
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