A Catholic Approach to Trauma
Stephen Watt introduces us to a Catholic approach to the the question of suffering in the face of secular and pagan philosophical answers.
Anyone who teaches philosophy, particularly ethics, will probably at some time have had to deal with how to present sensitive subjects in a classroom or academic writing. Since, like so many current public debates, this area has now been heavily politicised, the two sides of the culture wars have lined up with simple nostrums about the absolute need for unfettered speech, or letting sensitivities override discussion of ideas. But it’s a very different problem when you’re actually faced with discussing pornography with a sex offender in prison, or death with a student who has a terminal illness, or abortion with someone who has faced that decision herself. (And, yes, these are all real cases I have personally been faced with.)
I start off by mentioning this because I am acutely aware that, by adding a slightly abstract, academic article to a series of discussions in the Coracle on trauma, there is a danger, perhaps unavoidable, of both a callousness in dealing with an issue that, above all, should be exemplifying the theological virtue of caritas, but also of just missing the point by writing something which only skates along the surface of reality. All this should remind us of the inadequacy of philosophy taken only as an argumentative academic discipline (to borrow a description from Mary Midgley, merely a sport for very clever young men) rather than as an agonising, lifelong grappling with the fundamental question of, ‘How should we live?’
Even though I’m going to conclude that a Catholic approach to suffering offers rather more than is found in at least some ancient philosophical theories, ancient Greek philosophy can still provide us with some useful perspectives on this intense, complicated need both to think seriously about important areas, but also to do so in a way that does not simply reduce them to a merely intellectual exercise. It does this partly because it was an approach to philosophy that focused very much on that wrestling with how to live rather than just argue, and also existed in a space that both predated Christianity but was also theological in the sense that the arguments and answers given might well refer to God or gods or spirits in a way that modern secularised philosophy might avoid. As St John Paul II teaches in Fides et Ratio:
The fundamental harmony between the knowledge of faith and the knowledge of philosophy is once again confirmed. Faith asks that its object be understood with the help of reason; and at the summit of its searching reason acknowledges that it cannot do without what faith presents.
I’m going to consider two ancient philosophical approaches to trauma in the rest of this article: the approach of Stoicism and the approach of Aristotle. In short, the Stoics and Aristotle both approach the issue of trauma through the distinction between internal and external goods. Most philosophical approaches to the good life in the ancient world centred on the cultivation of character, in particular, the cultivation of the virtues which were regarded as goods internal to a person. Although the list of these virtues vary, Plato’s ‘cardinal virtues’ of courage, moderation, justice and practical wisdom are representative of the sort of things being considered. Both Aristotle and the Stoics would agree that cultivation of the virtues is the central element of the good life. But there was an important difference between them. Stoics believed that the virtues were all that mattered: as long as one behaved virtuously, one could be as happy (in the sense of ‘living well’) whilst being tortured as one could whilst living in the lap of luxury. External goods such as health and wealth and even physical harms just didn’t matter and were simply occasions for the display of the correct responses by the virtuous person. Aristotle on the other hand believed that, although virtues were the most important element in the good life, external circumstances also mattered and, in extreme cases, could destroy the goodness of a life:
Hence the happy [‘living well’] person has need of the goods of the body and external goods and luck, so as not to be impeded in these ways. Those who assert that the person broken on the wheel and falling into great misfortunes is happy, if only he is good, are, willingly or unwillingly, talking nonsense.
We are left with two contrasting pictures of what it is to live well in the face of trauma: for the Stoics, it is a matter of acting virtuously in the face of the (unimportant) external world. For Aristotle, it is a matter of acting as virtuously as you can, but with the recognition that, at some point, the external harms you have encountered may be more than human nature can bear and that, as a consequence, you cannot live a fully good life.
There are complexities in the disagreement between the Stoics and Aristotle that cannot be dealt with in the space available here. But even in the sketch of the two positions just given, you can see echoes of modern approaches: an unwillingness to give up on people who have suffered trauma (where Aristotle might simply have accepted that their lives are ruined); and a worry about blaming the victim (in situations where the Stoics would ascribe the trauma to a lack of virtue).
Does the modern world have a third remedy for trauma which avoids the pessimism of Aristotle or the optimism of the Stoics? I’m not sure the modern secular world does: as so often, the Greeks have set out the main theoretical positions 2,500 years ago. But, putting it no more strongly, Catholicism makes the contrast much more complicated for at least three reasons. First, everything that happens is under the control and purpose of a caring God: God does not will evil to happen to us; he only permits it for a higher good. There is, therefore, a theoretical justification for the existence of an evil and any consequent trauma, even if that justification cannot be known by us. Second, in the Passion of Christ (and in the imitation of that Passion by the martyrs and the everyday suffering of the faithful), the worst evil in terms of suffering and morally evil actions by others is seen as redeemable. Finally, as modelled by the Our Father, we are encouraged to ask for external goods and even ‘luck’: ‘Give us this day our daily bread…. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.’ The interaction of these three new elements beyond the pagan and secular approach isn’t going to lead to a bright shiny solution to the general problem of evil and the personal problem of undeserved trauma. But it does move beyond either the Stoic or the Aristotelian position: unlike Aristotle’s approach, no one is left without the possibility of redemption; unlike the Stoic approach, no one is left to blame for their trauma by being insufficiently virtuous.
I began this article by emphasising the dangers that philosophy runs in dealing with trauma. In any academic, ‘dry’ approach there is the danger of developing an intellectually coherent answer which obscures or writes off the experience of trauma. Again, academic, and other professional approaches run the risk of taking away the trauma from the person traumatised and passing ownership on to professional Job’s comforters for analysis and prescription. Neither of those approaches is utterly wrong -understanding is important and expertise exists- but neither is complete. All human beings have or will experience suffering. Some of us will experience terrible suffering and terrible long-term effects from that suffering. But the Catholic possibility which neither abandons whatever can be done by humans to alleviate that suffering, nor leaves it meaningless, nor attempts to explain it away quickly and professionally, seems a rather more promising approach than those of either Stoicism, Aristotle, or their modern successors.
By Stephen Watt