Joshua Hordern – författare

Compassion in Healthcare gives an account of the nature and content of compassion and its role in healthcare. While compassion appears to be a straightforward aspect of life and practice, Hordern's analysis shows that it is plagued by both conceptual and practical ills, and stands in need of some quite specific kinds of therapy. Starting from a diagnosis of what precisely is wrong with 'compassion'--its debilitating political entanglements, the vagueness of its meaning, and the risk of burnout it threatens--three therapies are prescribed for these ills: an understanding of patients and healthcare workers as those who pass through the life-course, encountering each other as wayfarers and pilgrims; a grasp of the nature of compassion in healthcare; and an embedding of healthcare within the realities of civic life. Applying these therapeutic strategies uncovers how compassionate relationships acquire their content in healthcare practice. The form that compassion takes is shown to depend on how doctrines of time, tragedy, salvation, responsibility, fault, and theodicy make a difference to the quality of people's lives and relationships. Drawing on the author's real-world collaborations, the way in which compassion matters to practice and policy is worked out in the detail of healthcare professionalism, marketization, and technology. Covering everything from conception to old age, and from machine learning to religious diversity, Compassion in Healthcare draws on philosophy, theology, and everyday experience to expand our understanding of what compassion means for healthcare practice.

What is the nature of affections such as joy, compassion, sorrow, and shame and what role do they play in politics? While political experience is replete with affectivity, the affective dimension of political experience has typically been under-conceptualised in political theory. Joshua Hordern argues that Christian political theology and contemporary theory of emotions have resources to respond to this challenge and, in so doing, to offer diagnoses and remedies for the political alienation and democratic deficit which trouble contemporary political life. Hordern contends that affections have a cognitive aptitude whereby they become enduring features of shared political reasoning. In conversation with Martha Nussbaum, Jürgen Habermas, Roger Scruton, Oliver O'Donovan and other political thinkers both classical and contemporary, his argument interrelates affections with memory, moral order, death, suffering, virtue, neuroscience, familial life and national identity. In contrast to dualisms which would separate reason from affection and theology from politics, Hordern describes the way that affections' role in politics is shaped by the eschatological commitments of political thought. Through close attention to Deuteronomy, Luke and Acts, Hordern considers the role of affections in institutions of political representation, law and healthcare. Over against post-national visions which underplay locality in human identity, the account of political affectivity which emerges suggests that civic participation, critical patriotic loyalties, social trust and international concern will be primarily galvanised by the renewal of local affections through effective political representation. Moreover, churches, shaped by the affective vision of their Scriptures, are to embody the joyful, hopeful affective life of the Kingdom of God and thereby offer renewal to social and political experience at local, national and international levels.

The Church of England’s status as the only established church in the Anglican Communion often sparks heated debates, with critics calling it an outdated relic in need of reform. Yet, beneath the surface of public discourse lies a broader and more nuanced conversation – one that this book brings to light. A Voice in the Wilderness gathers an eclectic mix of voices – politicians, historians, journalists, theologians and experienced clergy – to explore the enduring value of the Church of England’s public role. Far from a one-sided defence of establishment, this collection captures the diverse reasons people from various walks of life cherish the Church’s unique place in society. Highlighting perspectives from unexpected quarters, the book challenges common assumptions and invites readers to reconsider what it means for a church to be ‘established’ in a modern, pluralistic society. Both a contribution to the ongoing debate and a reflection of the varied opinions surrounding the Church, A Voice in the Wilderness is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersection of religion, culture and public life.

How does the market affect and redefine healthcare? The marketisation of Western healthcare systems has now proceeded well into its fourth decade. But the nature and meaning of the phenomenon has become increasingly opaque amidst changing discourses, policies and institutional structures. Moreover, ethics has become focussed on dealing with individual, clinical decisions and neglectful of the political economy which shapes healthcare. This interdisciplinary volume approaches marketisation by exploring the debates underlying the contemporary situation and by introducing reconstructive and reparative discourses. The first part explores contrary interpretations of ‘marketisation’ on a systemic level, with a view to organisational-ethical formation and the role of healthcare ethics. The second part presents the marketisation of healthcare at the level of policy-making, discusses the ethical ramifications of specific marketisation measures and considers the possibility of reconciling market forces with a covenantal understanding of healthcare. The final part examines healthcare workers’ and ethicists’ personal moral standing in a marketised healthcare system, with a view to preserving and enriching virtue, empathy and compassion.Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138735736_oachapter4.pdfChapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138735736_oachapter7.pdf