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Healthcare and the Health of the Public 2023-2024

The DCII discussion group on “Healthcare and Human Flourishing” continued to explore the value propositions of our social institutions, which began during Spring 2023. As with last year’s sessions on compassion and healthcare, these interdisciplinary discussions considered the interaction between essential social institutions, basic moral ideas, and the larger society that supported these essential functions and advanced or limited their moral aspirations. To reflect this emphasis, the group was renamed “Healthcare and the Health of the Public.”

The discussion last year focused on healthcare practices and institutions, drawing on Joshua Hordern’s book Compassion in Healthcare: Pilgrimage, Practice and Civic Life. This text allowed participants to consider the different ways that societies designed their healthcare systems to strike a balance between the systemic requirements of modern medicine, the value of compassion, and the political and social principles on which society was organized.

The group continued thinking about healthcare in 2024 but also welcomed reflections on the relations between human flourishing and other disciplines, including law, business, and – certainly relevant to the context – higher education. To go beyond the focus on compassion, the consideration expanded to include the values and virtues of responsibility and hope.

Toward these goals, participants were requested to read and consider two books, both of which were provided free of charge to the first 20 participants:

– Wendy Brown, Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber (The Tanner Lectures on Human Values). Harvard University Press, 2023.

– Michael Lamb, A Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought. Princeton University Press, 2022.

Participants were asked to email the Maguire Ethics Center to confirm their attendance and schedule a time to pick up their books.

These two works by distinguished contemporary scholars provided a thoughtful introduction to the modern and resolutely secular thoughts of Max Weber, and to Augustine’s classical and Christian reflections on virtue. Together, authors Brown and Lamb helped participants to read two authors who were highly influential in their own troubled times and relate those observations to the questions of society today. The group hoped to continue exploring the connections between the social institutions essential to human flourishing, the values and virtues those institutions required, and how these disciplinary requirements could be integrated into the structures of society as a whole.

The meeting format this semester was slightly different than last year. Each of the four sessions met at 4:00 pm for wine and light refreshments, after which Dr. Robin Lovin gave a lecture focused on the social theory that made virtues like responsibility and hope intelligible to -- and influential for -- flourishing modern societies. There was plenty of time for discussion and Q&A after the lectures, and the meetings concluded by 5:30 pm, after which there was time for additional informal discussion. All meetings took place in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, room 220.

The meeting schedule was as follows:
–Tuesday, February 6th – Discussion of part one of Nihilistic Times. Dr. Robin Lovin provided an introduction to the book and the discussion.
–Tuesday, March 5th – Lecture on Marx and Durkheim.
–Tuesday, April 2nd – Lecture on Weber.
–Tuesday, April 30th – Synthetic/Constructive Lecture.