Strikingly, Pope Benedict’s brief letter, “On the Urgent Task of Educating Young People” (2008), called for teaching young people to suffer well, for “the capacity for loving corresponds to the capacity for suffering and for suffering together.” In a similar vein, social critics like Ivan Illich have expressed concern that the art of suffering, and likewise the art of facing death, are atrophying as our prospects for medical and technological ameliorations of particular maladies seem to increase. Drawing on the work of Pope John Paul II, Illich, Robert Spaemann, José Granados, dcjm, and others, this course examines the fundamental human experiences of suffering and death in historical and theological-anthropological contexts, in view of the increasing role of technology in medicine and in society.
Selected Texts
Wendell Berry, Fidelity: Five Stories.
Ivan Illich, Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis, the Expropriation of Health.
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
Josef Pieper, Death And Immortality.
Faculty
Lesley Rice
Assistant Professor of Bioethics
Dr. Rice received her doctorate in theology from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute with a dissertation on contemporary Catholic thought concerning biotechnology and the beginning of life. Her research concerns the history and philosophy of biology, the character of biological knowing, and the cultural and anthropological significance of biotechnologies.
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