About the Healthcare and the Health of the Public Research Cluster
The DCII discussion group on “Healthcare and Human Flourishing” continues to explore the values propositions of our social institutions, which began during Spring 2023. As with the last year’s sessions on compassion and healthcare, these interdisciplinary discussions will consider the interaction between essential social institutions, basic moral ideas, and the larger society that supports these essential functions and advances or limits their moral aspirations. To reflect this emphasis, the group has been 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 us to consider the different ways that societies design 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 the society is organized. The group will continue thinking about healthcare in 2024, but will also welcome reflections on the relations between human flourishing and other disciplines, including law, business, and – certainly relevant to our context – higher education. To continue beyond the focus on compassion, our consideration this year will expand to include the values and virtues ofresponsibility andhope. Toward these goals, participants are requested to read and consider two current books, both of which will be provided free of charge to the first 20 participants: Please email the Maguire Ethics Center at maguire_ethics@smu.edu to confirm your attendance and schedule a time to pick up your books. These two works by distinguished contemporary scholars provide 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 help us to read two authors who were highly influential in their own troubled times and relate those observations to the questions of our society today. We hope thus to continue to explore the connections between the social institutions essential to human flourishing, the values and virtues those institutions require of us, and the ways these disciplinary requirements can be integrated into the structures of society as a whole. The meeting format this semester will be slightly different than the format last year. Each of the four sessions will meet 4pm for wine and light refreshments, after which Dr. Robin Lovin will give a lecture focused on the social theory that makes virtues like responsibility and hope intelligible to -- and influential for -- flourishing modern societies. There will be plenty of time for discussion and Q&A after the lectures, and the meeting conclude by 5:30pm, after which there will be time for additional informal discussion. All meetings will take place in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center room 220. The meeting schedule is as follows: Tuesday, February 6th– Discussion of part one of Nihilistic Times. Dr. Robin Lovin will provide an introduction to the book and our discussion. Tuesday, March 5th– Lecture on Marx and Durkheim. Tuesday, April 2nd– Lecture on Weber. Tuesday, April 30rd– Synthetic/Constructive Lecture.
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