Suffering Presence

Stanley Hauerwas is Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at the Divinity School of Duke University. He is the author of many books, including Suffering Presence (University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), Vision and Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), and is co-author of Christians Among the Virtues (University of Notre Dame Press, 1997). His book A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), was selected by Christianity Today as one of the 100 most important books on religion of the twentieth century.

"Hauerwas's overriding concern in this text is with the contribution theological ethics can make to moral dilemmas in medicine....The text is a most provocative collection of essays and will become standard reading for all medical ethicists who take the theological voice seriously." —Ethics"Hauerwas projects a certain view of medicine, and leaves the ethical implications to emerge from that. He sees medicine as a moral art, and says that ' fundamental to understanding the moral art of medicine is the willingness of patient and physician alike to be present to one another during times of suffering.' He goes on to argue that a human medicine of this sort is 'impossible to sustain in a society which lacks the moral capacity to care for the mentally handicapped.'" —Studies in Christian Ethics"As theologian, not historian, Hauerwas offers his own particular analysis and synthesis of Christianity, while bracketing the diversity of emphases that characterize the multiple expressions of Christianity." —Hastings Center Report""Hauerwas is an acute observer of the fundamental dilemma of contemporary medicine, a dilemma largely unrecognised within the profession itself. He perceives the essentially moral charater of the medical enterprise and the traumatic consequences of the conteporary moral anarchy for the profession with has grown up in the world of settled values." —Scottish Journal of Theology"According to Hauerwas, medical technologies and children born with disabilities challenge the moral commitments of a community. How Christians understand the meaning of suffering is directly connected to how we are to be present with the suffering of others." —Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics""Stanley Hauerwas's book is in the genre of books like Ivan Illich's Medical Nemesis and Paul Ramsey's Patient as Person. It is a radical, fresh, and impassioned call to abandon the tedious ruts of faddish 'medical ethics' and return to the enlivening roots of the perennial faith-born medical wisdom." —Journal of Religion