Pastoral Aesthetics: A Theological Perspective on Principlist Bioethics

It is often said that bioethics emerged from theology in the 1960s and that since then it has grown into a secular enterprise, yielding to other disciplines and professions such as philosophy and law. During the 1970s and 1980s, a kind of secularism in biomedicine and related areas was encouraged by the need for a neutral language that could provide common ground for guiding clinical practice and research protocols. Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, in their pivotal Principles of Biomedical Ethics, attempted to achieve this neutrality through an approach that came to be known as "principlist bioethics." 

In Pastoral Aesthetics, Nathan Carlin critically engages Beauchamp and Childress by revisiting the role of religion in bioethics and argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich's method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care, drawing on a range of sources, including painting, fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, cultural studies, clinical journals, classic cases in bioethics, and original pastoral care conversations. What emerges is a form of interdisciplinary inquiry that will be of special interest to bioethicists, theologians, and chaplains.

EVENT DETAILS

Date: Monday, December 9
Time: 6:30 - 8:00 pm
Location: Institute for Spirituality and Health
8100 Greenbriar, Houston, TX 77054
Cost: $20 admission

Signed books will be available for purchase at the event
Dinner will be served

About the Author

Nathan Carlin is Associate Professor in the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), where he directs the Medical Humanities Scholarly Concentration for medical students. At UTHealth, he also holds appointments in the Department of Family Medicine, the Department of Psychiatry, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the School of Dentistry. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of seven books, including Medical Humanities: An Introduction (Cambridge 2015), Pastoral Aesthetics: A Theological Perspective on Principlist Bioethics (Oxford 2019), and Teaching Health Humanities (Oxford 2019). He also holds the Samuel Karff Chair.