Farr Curlin, "What is Medicine’s Place in a Well-Lived Life?"
- Sponsor
- Department of Philosophy
- Speaker
- Farr Curlin
- Contact
- Nir Ben Moshe
- nir@illinois.edu
- Views
- 2
- Originating Calendar
- Illinois Forum on Human Flourishing in a Digital Age event calendar
Talk Title: What is Medicine’s Place in a Well-Lived Life?
Abstract
What kind of activity is medicine, and what is it for? What does medicine contribute to a well-lived life? These seem like important questions both for medical practitioners and their patients. Yet these questions are rarely asked, even by physicians and medical ethicists. Meanwhile, all manner of human experience has been medicalized—from small stature to anxiety to pregnancy to mortality. Medicine’s influence over human experience inexorably grows. In this lecture, physician-ethicist Farr Curlin will consider these fundamental questions and argue that medicine is for the patient’s health, objectively understood, not for maximizing “well-being,” subjectively understood. As it turns out, he will propose, if medicine is to contribute to rather than undermine human flourishing, it must do less rather than more.
About the Speaker
Farr Curlin, MD, is Josiah Trent Professor of Medical Humanities in the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, & History of Medicine and Co-Director of the Theology, Medicine and Culture Initiative (TMC) at Duke University. Dr. Curlin has worked to bring attention to the intersection of medicine, ethics, and theology. In 2012 he helped to found both the University of Chicago’s Program on Medicine and Religion and the annual Conference on Medicine and Religion. Since 2015, through Duke Divinity School’s TMC Initiative, he and colleagues have brought graduate theological training to those with vocations to health care. Starting in 2023, Dr. Curlin also is working with colleagues across North America to develop the Hippocratic Society, an association of students and practitioners dedicated to fulfilling the profession to heal. He is co-author, with Chris Tollefsen, of The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession (Notre Dame University Press, 2021), as well as more than 150 articles and book chapters addressing the moral and spiritual dimensions of medical practice.