Any experience that requires us, as humans, to deal with others, as humans, requires us to formulate an adequate understanding of what it means to be human. Increasingly over the past couple centuries, much of higher education and particularly medical education has taken a view of human personhood that is based on assumptions which are not well founded philosophically and which do not end up serving well the needs of the clinician, patient, or student. Taking a fresh look at a religious view of human personhood may help us to re-invigorate how we view our patients, our students, our colleagues, and ourselves, especially as we seek to understand the growing complexity, wonder, and mystery of illness and healing, life and death in the human experience.

Todd Best, M.A., is Program Administrator at the Christian Study Center of Gainesville, an independent educational center that works alongside the University of Florida in exploring the intellectual resources of the Christian tradition for responding to the enduring questions of human experience and the challenges that emerge from contemporary cultural change. He has an M.A. in religious studies from the University of Florida, where his research focused on philosophy of religion and educational philosophy. Much of his work revolves around how Christian thought intersects the various disciplines in the academy. Other areas of interest include social ethics, moral philosophy, and post-modern interpretation theories.

This lecture, organized by the MU School of Medicine, is funded by a grant from The George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health.

Links in archives are not maintained.