The Problem with Solutions:Thomistic Narratives of Suffering as an Alternate Foundation for Medical Ethics

Contemporary medical ethics uses the analytical approach; suffering becomes one more condition awaiting a solution. The thesis offers a different perspective; suffering is a manifestation of evil, a mysterious mendacity, which perpetually confounds the work of the speculative mind towards a solution. Thus a complementary rationality is required in the context of suffering. Following Thomas Aquinas I am proposing practical reason as that rationality which will move the sufferer out of harm’s way towards the good because its work is the experiential know-how of the sensory nature. This new discourse of practical reason will proceed according to storied thinking using metaphors and symbols to imagine what the emergence from suffering into flourishing might look like. Departing from the subject-object paradigm of modern medicine, moral agency will be expressed in the voice of the first person—the sufferer. In working out a narrative, the sufferer undergoes transformation by imagery reflecting terminal annihilation, or by imaginings beyond the empirical, i.e., real experiences of unanticipated vitality. The narrative structure will follow Thomas Aquinas on the sensory nature with its triad of movements. 1.Sensory apprehension: external objects are perceived and stored in the interiority as images with primal meanings of harm or good (intentiones), which when recollected by memory may undergo healing transformation. 2.Sensory appetition: the moral agent desires an alluring object, which, when attained, offers the promise of something pleasurable, joyful, and good. 3.Abiding in the good attained: analogically speaking, the human being abides in contemplative intimacy with the animating, healing Divinity. Suffering becomes an evil privation of these vital movement(s). To shift from suffering towards flourishing, the previously suppressed movements undergo reanimation. Thus the logic of practical reason and the new ethics discourse will become the narrative of a sufferer who desires some particular movement, which will subvert impending annihilation so as to participate the mystery of ever more vigorous animation. While the old theoretical principles of right and wrong will remain true, a new contrapuntal voice of agency will arise, namely, that of the sufferer emerging from the immobility of suffering into a wholesome dynamism of being.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD