The Troubled Dream of Life:
May, William F.
BOOKS When all is said and done fellow passenger on a THE TROUBLED DREAM OF LIFE human life. Few of us would voluntarily ...
...Callahan's book will immediately supplant tingencies of the human body itself...
...Nether morality is a rules from which to start...
...He mainder of my days in a way that at least ment ought to aim at a good death, not at writes with a view to recovering what, in puts me in a position to be (as Wordsworth eliminating death...
...presses the equilibrium we should seek...
...Not only does such a vision of fering of dying and the embarrassment of VV Dennis O'Brien morality oversimplify a deduction which depending on others, and promptly opt out in real life seems full of dilemmas, Johnof living...
...Re- early discern that the mysterious com- relativism...
...clearly to think-that perhaps I ought not whom I will personally urge this won- Further, as medicine wages its uncondi- to want to be that kind of person...
...Johnson offers various counligiously put, Callahan's book can be read plexity of our life is not embraced by ters to a conclusion he does not wish to as an antignostic tract, against those who maxims...
...and I have several dozen timately reaches a limit...
...His own closing pages on "Solidarity tion-"at what point, or within what range, man who more than anyone helped to and Death" suggest that he already knows, should lifesaving treatment be abated to create and congregate the pool of experts but does not name, a transcendent that perenhance the likelihood of a good death...
...Modem "If it hadn't been for all that damn health food, I could have been up here years ago...
...The subtitle of the book-Living with Mortality-nicely ex- MORAL IMAGINATION to be the Enlightenment...
...Where did draw...
...another human contingency, the pain and desire for maximum control has not always The book puts the rampant debate about suffering of those whom medicine has kept served me well...
...who write as medical ethicists, but he dures immanently in and through the "livThis new way of putting the question will himself writes with a tone and spirit that ing sacrifices that human existence as not eliminate absolutely all pain and suf- reminds us of the moralist in us all...
...As such requires...
...Matthew 25 seems to suggest so in another Like the ancient Greeks, Callahan op- In a closing coda, the provisionally version of surprised by joy...
...I wait and watch...
...Thus the medical establish- natural theology governs the work...
...control our fate totally...
...Few of us, moreover, would Life and said, "Well, at least, the title is William F. May want to impose gratuitous suffering upon true...
...work or the flower arranger who learns how sense have an instinctive repugnance to The obvious worry of such an analysis to work with the materials at hand, not men of maxims...
...Conventionally, fairs, those who advocate euthanasia would The ironies of the impulse to control ethicists have discerned opposing moral reassert human control by letting the pa- abound...
...Mark Johnson Mark Johnson's Moral Imagination is Manic aggressive medicine has sought to University of Chicago, $29.95, 287 pp...
...Relying on work As befits a classical teleologist, Callahan matter of imagina- in cognitive science, Johnson argues that chooses aesthetic images to express our tion or sense, it is the clear-cut concepts in which the moral proper vocation within the limits of our clear for these two rules are stated are anything but...
...One might but there is what he calls "transperspecand medicine-to distract us from com- imagine the Ten Commandments and the tivity"-a sort of gathering of the metaing to terms with our mortal, limited rest of Deuteronomy were at fault, but in phors with which we humans have told condition...
...which will then specify "the right thing euthanasia run up against the pain and suf- to do...
...Adjectives that constantly appear in the text are "excessive," "obsessive...
...a sustained attack on what he calls "the eliminate mortality and inflicted upon us Moral Law Folk Theory" which, he says, longer lives and worse health, longer ill- MORAL SENSE holds that moral reasoning consists in nesses and slower deaths...
...longer aging and James Q. Wilson bringing concrete cases under moral rules increased dementia...
...chance...
...that is eloquent...
...everyone and everything is, in fact, out of thanasia...
...The modern medical establish- Callahan concedes much good in both control...
...unself-conscious humility (what other ly with a life that somersaults beyond should yield to the more appropriate ques- kind is there...
...because such people is that it is a straight road to utter moral longing for flowers not available...
...Both seek compulsively to solve the problem of human existence through control...
...In response to this latter state of af- I could invariably admire...
...In reaction, supporters of active euthanasia abhor suffering, not death, as the -Y~ supreme evil and thus would give up the battle against death, indeed kill, in order to spare the patient who so chooses, pain and suffering...
...The society that Along the way, Callahan declares, "I am skeptical Callahan still keeps the door urges without let or limit a battle against not a believer," but a kind of natural piety open, "Can death, and the life in which it suffering and death, often imposes worse suffuses the book, and the epistemologi- is embedded, be transcended...
...He is skeptical of the imperial self-the self that refuses to accept lim- BETWEEN LAW & CHARACTER its-either those limits which mortality itself imposes upon us or the limits borne of our finite and diminishing powers and our mutual dependency...
...He also writes with an quickly associates the transcendent soleabatement of lifesaving treatment...
...After having read it, I must also re- ourselves or our fellows when we can, to port that it is a beautiful book, richly sug- some degree, reduce it...
...Mark Johnson cites that the notion of univocal rules is defeated specificity of the materials on which they George Eliot: "All people of broad, strong before it starts...
...I do not see suffering and more turbulent deaths upon cal optimism of his Catholic heritage in this for myself, but I hope to live the reits members...
...mends that the old question-"when is a sensus may entail some reshaping of our In this passage, Callahan perhaps too patient dying, and thus a candidate for the national character...
...But I came to feel-though not at first friends, professional and personal, on nate the ineliminable, our mortality...
...Psychoanalysts have recognized drives behind modern, aggressive medicine tient design his own death and therewith that the person who insists on controlling and the reactive movement of active eu- bring his own pain and suffering to an end...
...Here is a death...
...BOOKS When all is said and done fellow passenger on a THE TROUBLED DREAM OF LIFE human life...
...But Callahan sees a single moral obsession behind each movement...
...and death in a new light...
...As a veter- of modem science and technology to ex- recognizes something morally unsavory an of the classroom, I try to freshen my tend human control over nature-first, about the moral ideal of absolute controlmotive for teaching by assigning books over the waywardness of the external en- either the controlling person or the socifrom which I can continue to learn...
...gestive and wise, beyond the capacity of medicine springs from the larger attempt But, beginning with himself, Callahan this limited precis to convey...
...Few of us would voluntarily Delta flight glanced at Living with Mortality give up the amenities, the abundances, and my review copy of Daniel Callahan the rescues from disease and untimely 1% Daniel Callahan's The Simon & Schuster, $21, 272 pp...
...vironment and, more recently, over the con- ety committed to unconditional control...
...death with which modem technology has Troubled Dream of favored us...
...It did not create a person our contemporary responses to suffering alive...
...a sense, we already partly know and to put it) `surprised by joy.' It is unlikely but At the policy level, Callahan recom- reaching a consensus even though a con- perhaps not impossible...
...Enthusiasts for active Free Press, $22.95, 313 pp...
...11 poses excess...
...It cannot elimi- trol...
...But Callahan confesses, "in most of my life, another in my course on the humanities the effort to counter disease and death ul- I want and demand a great deal of conand medicine...
...We need to cultivate those virtues son doubts that there are even any moral that allow us to live with our mortality...
...In effect, they would solve the problem of suffering by eliminating the sufferer...
...Do we not already particfering, but it will help avoid those evils Samuel Johnson put it, "We are all moral- ipate here and now in the transcendent, as that beset us when we claim the right to ists perpetually, geometers only by we live limitedly with and for others...
...I came derfully spacious and healing meditation tional fight against death, it hugely expands to notice that, in other parts of my life, my on the human condition...
...He likens us to sculptors who authors that it is not thinking is everywhere metaphorical so must respect and honor the limits and a matter of rules...
...both authors the principal villain turns out fulfilling life narratives...
...Our condition...
...In effect, medicine attempts to remove the mark of mortality from our frame...
...There may not be rational objectivity, would use knowledge-and technology- enthusiasm for maxims arise...
...Commonweal 22 October 1993: 25 contaminating its own life...
...That sounds right...
...The society that has prided itself ment sees death as the supreme evil, the impulse and the results of the modern in dominating the external environment has defines the doctor as a fighter against attempt to control the natural world and succeeded in massively polluting it and death, and mobilizes all the technological resources of the profession in a pitched battle against disease and death...
...From this imag26: 22 October 1993 Commonweal...
Vol. 120 • October 1993 • No. 18
