A 10:002 or 10:003 Unit ~ Christian Science, Euthanasia, and the Rhetoric of Suffering

Overview	Schedule		Assignments		Readings
			Writing	Speaking

Readings

From Representations of Suffering to Controversy It seems appropriate to expose students to a few, carefully-selected accounts of pain and suffering that will allow them to reflect upon their own values in regard to these things. Only then are students adequately equipped to understand the complexity at work in discourses on suffering-related issues like euthanasia and Christian Science, where different attitudes and beliefs about suffering are constantly at work—not just informing what people choose to argue, but also determining how successfully those arguments appeal to similar values in others. In many ways, an initial focus on representations of suffering can unlock a much more sophisticated understanding of the finely-nuanced stances which can be “mapped” in the controversies themselves. Interestingly enough (and possibly useful to discuss explicitly in class), the strongest arguments against euthanasia tend to rely on statements about the spiritual or emotional value of adversity, but since these values have been relatively marginalized in public discourse by our cultural emphasis on scientific knowledge, the arguments, too, tend to get marginalized or pushed into less “academic” modes of writing, such as the spiritual or self-help genres. This seems to be one of the key reasons these particular controversies appear less than controversial to most students: many students are culturally predisposed to accept the more academic and “logical” sounding arguments in support of euthanasia because they appeal to more concrete principles such as individual rights. Thus, these arguments appear “superior” (on a public-policy level) to the more touchy-feely, subjective discourses which depend upon appeals to spiritual and emotional values to oppose euthanasia. Yet, if you probe them, many students will admit to sharing these spiritual and emotional values on a personal, private level. The texts used to interrogate “representations” of suffering, therefore, work best if most of them incorporate an optimistic or positive portrayal of suffering. Ideally, these texts will help rekindle a sense of the potential validity of spiritual views in relation to public controversy, and help students understand that arguments about medical practice, healthcare, and individual rights need not depend wholly on scientific fact. (Often, for example, students who oppose euthanasia seem to feel that the only valid argument they can legitimately muster against euthanasia is to appeal to the possibility that, with daily advances in technology, a “medical cure” might be discovered right after the patient chooses to die.) Structuring the Readings Essentially, each of the texts below (and any additional supplementary materials which might be needed, depending on how you organize the weekly schedule) is intended to be considered independently, as an object of rhetorical inquiry which tells us something about the ways suffering can be interpreted and utilized. In particular, students should be encouraged to explore the language used to describe suffering, and the meaning or importance which the author tries to assign to it. How does the author establish his or her authority to address the topic of suffering? How is suffering represented? How does this text challenge your views of suffering? What kind(s) of suffering does the author focus on? How are the author’s attitudes toward suffering shaped by his or her perspective, values, age, gender, religious beliefs, etc.? How does the author seem conscious of his or her audience? In what ways does the author qualify his or her discussion of this delicate subject? How does your position or “baggage” as a reader (including your personal experiences with suffering) dispose you to accept, challenge, or deny the author’s claims? And so on. These observations will prove immensely valuable later when dealing with explicit controversies about suffering because, as I have found, students begin to absorb some understanding that suffering may not be entirely evil or useless, and that it can, in fact, be used to construct unique, valuable meaning. As the weeks progress, the instructor and students should also try to place these texts in conversation with each other. What would Lewis, for example, say in response to Fishman—or vice versa? In what ways do these texts share overlapping values about suffering, and in what ways do they disagree? Are scientific and spiritual understandings of suffering mutually exclusive? How do these accounts help inform our own attitudes toward suffering. In the process, this material offers potential to connect with the students’ personal experiences and also daily issues in the world news. Some of the broader questions to consider include: How does suffering (with its seemingly inexpressible nature) grant a kind of inherent authority or greater ethos to the person who has suffered? How do people construct arguments which run counter to the alleviation of suffering without coming across as inhumane or evil—or can they? Eventually, the course material culminates in a series of readings on the two explicit controversies for this unit: euthanasia and Christian Science. These controversies are closely linked: the same issues about sickness and individual rights involved in any debate about euthanasia can also inform the debate about Christian Science and the right of parents to refuse certain types of medical treatment for their children based on their belief in the superior healing power of faith. Readings I recommend at least a few texts that discuss pain and suffering from scientific and religious viewpoints. The texts that follow proved most helpful and successful as representations of suffering. You may wish to revise the reading list, however. Ø      Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. New York: Harper, 1996. (p. 86-118) Lewis considers human pain in context of Christian spirituality and sinfulness. He discusses suffering in terms of humankind’s fallen condition as a kind of wake-up alarm to warn us when something in our lives or souls is in need of adjustment and improvement. “God... shouts in our pain,” he says, “it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Pain, in other words, disillusions us by exposing evil and destroying “false happiness.” For Lewis, the full surrender to God must involve pain. Moreover, adversity permits a uniquely-indispensable opportunity for greater self-understanding and for heroic sacrifice or demonstrations of virtue. It exposes humankind’s spirituality by revealing our absolute dependence on God. Moreover, pain serves a more practical function as a necessary preparative to render death more acceptable, and also as the force which instills fear and pity. Aside from serving as a useful account of the Christian tradition of finding value and grace in pain, his language serves as an interesting object of analysis in itself. At one point, for example, he very self-consciously addresses the reader, realizing that he may alienate some readers by insisting that pain is necessary, valuable, and deserved. It serves as a great example of the fact that suffering is a topic in which rhetoric and specific word-choice are always highly self-conscious because the stakes of offending or alienating the reader are higher than they are for other, less volatile topics. Ø      Fishman, Scott. The War on Pain. New York: Harper, 2000. (p. 5-8, 12-25, 28-31, 33-35) Fishman, a medical doctor, offers a very scientific account of pain as a consequence of nerve impulses relayed to the brain. More helpfully, however, he speaks of the difficulty of quantifying physical pain in the medical practice, and how doctors can never fully know the patient’s agony, but must rely on deceptive or exaggerated explanations of how the patient feels. Furthermore, he discusses the fact that each person has a different threshold of pain, meaning that the same level of pain will cause different degrees of discomfort to different people. Most useful, however, is his overarching discussion of pain as a kind of warning device which is extremely helpful and necessary because it signals the fact that something is out of order or not functioning properly within the body. These excerpts also offer a brief historical account of pain and life expectancy, and describe changing attitudes toward pain in the medical profession. Obviously, it complicates the euthanasia debate in many ways, including, for example, the recognition that what one person considers “unbearable” pain might feel only mildly painful to another person. Moreover, it raises the question (in connection with Lewis’s text) that, if we consider pain to be physically useful for diagnosing illnesses, why don’t we consider it emotionally and spiritually useful the way that Lewis suggests we ought? Fishman also points out, interestingly, the way that pain can be shaped by others (especially our parents) or by gender—again, facts which complicate a discussion about euthanasia, or at least the task of defining a “level” at which euthanasia becomes acceptable. Ø      Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 17 of Donne, John. Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. 1623. During his serious illness in 1623, Donne meditates upon the progress, meaning, and value of his suffering. In particular, like Lewis, he interprets it in Christian spiritual terms. At one point, he declares, “Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it”—a powerful and surprising claim given his painful, unpleasant condition and the lack of our sophisticated medical options. He laments the variable condition of humankind—that we can be well on minute, and ill the next—but eventually he casts suffering as a sign of two things: (1) some sinful condition in our souls that has brought illness upon us, and (2) God’s mercy which “corrects” us by punishing and purging sin via suffering. Sickness, therefore, is a highly ambiguous sign of one’s own sinfulness but also of divine grace and purification. As the sickness proceeds, he grows more comfortable (spiritually, not physically) with his suffering and eventually welcomes death. This text serves as a nice companion to Lewis’s piece because in addition to sharing Lewis’s interpretation of suffering, it offers students the perspective of a different historical period during which suffering was more omnipresent and virtually impossible to dismiss the way we can today in our highly-clinical atmosphere. Ø      Morris, Virginia. Talking About Death Won’t Kill You. New York: Workman P, 2001. (p. 49-92) Morris’s text serves as an intriguing sample from the self-help genre. Her argument, as the title suggests, is that our culture has developed an unhealthy fear toward pain and death, and consequently, we have lost the admirable values and practices surrounding death which other, earlier cultures possessed. Even in hospitals, she claims, death is hidden and erased from the consciousness of the living as much as possible. Consequently, people no longer make proper preparations for this inevitable moment at the end of their lives, leaving so many important things unsaid, so many wounds unhealed, so many lessons and wisdom unconveyed. Rather than fear death and shun suffering, she argues that we ought to cultivate a more mature and accepting attitude toward those who are dying—an attitude which permits us to rally around suffering or dying loved ones in order to comfort them in their final hours and bring a sense of closure and fulfillment to their lives. Again, her text itself offers an interesting object for rhetorical analysis, especially given the tremendous success of self-help books in our society. But unlike many self-help books, Morris’s text is not merely a collection of sappy idealistic quotes; she actually deals quite directly and engagingly with how our culture views death and dying. The usefulness of this text to any discussion of euthanasia and Christian Science is obvious. Ø      Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Despite the somewhat unorthodox presence of a novel in a controversy-based rhetoric curriculum, Bradbury’s novel serves as a brilliant and intriguing example of how literary works can and do construct strong, well-developed arguments about certain social issues. In this case, Bradbury deals with the problems attendant upon any society which (in striking similarity to our own) tries to anesthetize pain and remove conflict from every aspect of life. The central message of the book not only establishes for students the relevant, crucial role played by controversy (and by extension, rhetoric) in our society and our personal development, but also shows the similarly important role of adversity as a much-needed impetus for change and growth. This text is not as indispensable to the unit as the others, but it does significantly broaden the material available for considering how (and through what forms) rhetoric can function. Ø      Essays on Euthanasia: The articles "It's Over, Debbie" and "It's Not Over, Debbie" offer a useful example of the way the same story can be re-written with a different focus in order to change the way it impacts and influences the reader. Also useful is Sidney Hook's "In Defense of Voluntary Euthanasia" because Hook is writing as the quintessential example that opponents of euthanasia often raiseÑwhere the patient seeks euthanasia, but then miraculously recovers—yet surprisingly, he argues in favor of euthanasia and wishes that his choice to die had been respected. And, of course, there is James Rachels's important and oft-anthologized essay, "Active and Passive Euthanasia," which provides a useful distinction between two different forms of euthanasia, but argues there is no moral difference between the two. In later classes, you should assign additional essays to rekindle and complicate the debate by injecting more possible stances, and show how these nuanced positions can be "mapped" in relation to each other. To add some variety of style to the readings, you might assign "Removing Life Support Systems: Cruzan vs. Director, Missouri Department of Health" (a Supreme Court case record) and Arthur J. Dyck's "An Alternative to the Ethic of Euthanasia" (which offers a useful example of philosophically-styled arguments about this controversy). Ø      Essays on Christian Science: (source: Des Autels, Peggy, et al. Praying for a Cure: When Medical and Religious Practices Conflict. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield P, 1999.) This is the best, single-source compilation of essays on Christian Science that I was able to find. The writing is not the clearest and most accessible to students, so they may need some guidance here, but generally the three authors make a strong effort to represent three major perspectives on Christian Science--defending it, attacking it, and observing it from a "neutral" yes and no position. Each of the three authors (Des Autels, Battin, and May) adopts one of these stances, and the book is organized as a series of chapters which respond to each other. Since these essays are written in dialogue with one another, they are quite easy and convenient to "map." At the very least, I recommend assigning students to read chapters 2 and 5 because these represent the "defense" and the "neutral perspective" of Christian Science. While you can also incorporate arguments "against" Christian Science, I find that students are extremely willing to adopt this stance on their own. In any case, given the limited nature of viewpoints, I would also assign students to find and summarize one additional viewpoint on Christian Science that they find at the library or on the Internet (from a credible source, of course). Des Autels's essay (chapter two) is the most useful because it does a nice job of pointing out that, for Christian Scientists, physical healing is a secondary benefit, and that what is really at stake in suffering is spiritual growth, which is the primary aim. She also points to the social bias toward science and medicine, and the way that this marginalizes religious convictions. Ultimately, she insists that, although Christian Science appears highly irrational to a scientific culture like ours, it is really a difference of perspective: "when the goals of Christian Scientists are carefully examined, their 'irrational' choices are easily seen as rational choices for means to achieving their goals." The major shortcoming of this collection is that none of the authors is a Christian Scientist, so I recommend supplementing the readings with at least one such source. Revising the Readings Naturally, not all of the readings on the recommended syllabus need to be included. I recommend them because they have worked so successfully in the past; however, time constraints and other activities may cause this amount of reading to feel overwhelming. There are a few options to help alleviate this problem 1.     If time in the semester permits, you could expand the unit by one or two weeks and use the extra time to spread out the initial representations readings, thereby allowing greater time to discuss these texts more thoroughly, at the multiple levels mentioned earlier. Be sure, however, that this won’t force you to shortchange some other unit. 2.     You could assign the “representations” readings to specific groups of students and organize a set of presentations on each of the various texts in a single day or two, followed by some time for discussion. In this way, each group of students would only be responsible for reading one particular “representations” text, but would still benefit from the overviews of other texts presented by their classmates. The danger of this approach, however, is that it limits the amount of close textual attention you can pay to each text. To be successful, the instructor will need to give substantial, clear guidance to each group. Obviously each group should give an approximate summary of the text as a whole, but if the groups include 3 to 5 students each, you might ask each student in the group to focus on one specific section or representation of suffering in the text—thereby fostering much more thorough and engaging summaries. One helpful requirement might also be to have each group distribute a handout to the rest of the class which includes five or six paragraph-length excerpts from the text as a whole, serving as a kind of summary and/or list of intriguing moments in the text. In this way, the class as a whole will still be presented with various representations of suffering that permit them to reflect critically on their own values about suffering. This approach is infinitely preferable to simply cutting any of the “representations” readings because the “representations” readings serve a vital function in “resuscitating” the controversial nature of these particular controversies (see the rationale I provide above, in the section entitled From Representations to Controversy). 3.     Alternatively, the instructor might remove one of the two major controversies in this unit. The present recommended syllabus begins with the Christian Science controversy as a means to elicit initial student values about suffering and suffering-related controversies. This proves useful later, as the euthanasia controversy is broached, because it allows students to identify the extent to which their values and opinions about suffering can often appear self-contradictory when given two different contexts of suffering. It also allows students to gauge the extent to which their values and opinions have been transformed or more finely nuanced by their exposure to the representations texts. Having said that, an instructor could easily remove the initial “puppet controversy” and simply begin with the “representations” texts—still culminating, of course, in a suffering-related controversy such as Christian Science or euthanasia (either one will do). Regardless of how you choose to reduce the reading schedule (if at all), I do not recommend scaling down the intense readings that occur in the third week. Obviously, you might choose to replace some of these readings with materials of your own choosing, or to spread these materials out over a slightly longer timeframe (to facilitate close reading and analysis), but I cannot overemphasize the value of retaining a broad selection of essays and of having students read a few more each night. It will contribute immensely to a clearer understanding of what it means to thoroughly “map” a controversy because it demonstrates that there are countless, important differences of opinion—some subtle, some dramatic—surrounding any discourse on controversial issues. Even though these opinions frequently overlap into a few major “camps” or “sides” of the debate, dealing with a wide variety of arguments at some point during the unit will help students appreciate the complexity and wide range of opinions which make up the controversy spectrum, while also combatting the simple dichotomies that many students initially tend to think in (pro-life, pro-choice, etc.).

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