Warren Kinghorn Doesn't Think You're a Machine.

His new book is wayfaring A Christian Approach to Mental Health Care. In this episode, Warren Kinghorn and I discuss how the metaphor of the human being as machine has shaped mental health care and what's gained by reclaiming the older metaphor of the human as wayfarer. We talk about the ways that Thomas Aquinas theological vision of human behavior opens up a richer account of freedom, agency, and virtue. And we talk about the possibility that the meaning of

life is an active participation in blessing. Warren Kinghorn, I'm so happy to have you on The Habit podcast. I'm so excited about your book, wayfaring Subtitle A Christian Approach to Mental Health.

So in place of the image of the human being as a machine, especially the human body or mind as a machine, I draw in Saint Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century philosopher and theologian, to argue for a different image of the human as a wayfarer or pilgrim, and his human life as a journey. And and the practices of mental health care is being able to accompany each other on a journey. Hmm.

in different cities. We're depending on machines to, you know, allow us to have our conversation. Um, and, and this permeates our ways of thinking, not only about the world around us, but also about ourselves. Um, and there's a particular philosophical history to this that we may talk about. So especially, uh, René Descartes in the, you know, early 1600s, uh, is known as the father of modern philosophy. We think of him because he, he, uh, came up with this.

He articulated this idea of substance dualism, that the mind is a separate substance from the body. And we think about Descartes often as being the champion of the idea of the mind as as completely disembodied, as immaterial, which which Descartes did affirm. But just as important to Descartes work was his affirmation that the body is a machine, and in fact that all bodies, animal and human bodies are machines and and all of the natural world is,

is a matter of space and extension. So Descartes encouraged us to think of nature as a machine. It didn't take long before subsequent thinkers began to apply that way of thinking of a machine to the human mind also, which Descartes would have resisted, but which others would go along with. By the time we had the rise of modern psychology and psychiatry, this this idea that the human mind operated like a machine or as a machine was just kind of in the water, so to speak. It's

something that Freud picked up on. It's something that a lot of early psychologists picked up on, and therefore it shows up in our modern medical and mental health practices. Um, I think apart from the history of it, though, I think it's just we even the language that we use for ourselves often tracks with the idea of machines. So in in my field of medicine, We talk a lot about burnout of physicians and nurses. You know, pastors and

talk about this as well. But burnout is a mechanical image. Like, what else burns out? You know, I mean, rockets burn out, engines burn out, candles burn out. You know, we talk about, uh, you know, going on vacation to recharge. We talk about, you know, I have my, you know, my water and my coffee in front of me to refuel. You know, if I get hungry. These are all, like mechanistic images.

We talk about resilience, which is a physical image of, you know, an immaterial object that bends but doesn't break. And all these, I think are, are, are mechanical images that we use to apply to ourselves. And I've learned from Wendell Berry in this as well as others. But if, if we if we insist on a on using mechanical images for ourselves, we're eventually going to find ourselves treating

ourselves like machines. And so I think one, one just practical thing for us all to think of is how to resist mechanical, industrial images for human beings to replace those with creaturely images. So we're not, um, you know, we're not we're not machines that burn out and need to be refueled and recharged. We're we're we're bodies. We're living creatures who need to be fed and nourished and tended and cared for and held. The this is this is befitting our nature as embodied creatures of God, not

just artifacts or machines. Um, I can say more about the mental health care system and how I think that embodies this, but you may want to go a different direction. Uh, Jonathan.

But I think we can forget the fact that it's helpful because it, it it, um, what's the word I'm looking for? It excludes it excludes so much reality to simplify something that we can get our brains around. And then then we think, aha, now I've got my brain around this thing. Right. And when we apply that to the mind, right. The soul, the all our processes. Sure. I mean, I think it's really helpful to know it's

helpful because it is a gross oversimplification. Yeah. And then we and so that's not to say it's not helpful to say it helps by excluding most of reality.

simply calling it a hinge. The heart is a pump, but it's not. It's not the same as the pump that pumps, you know, water into our water towers, you know, to come into our houses. It's it's a hard it's a, it's an organic thing. So we, we tend to fix on mechanical images to help us to understand the body. And the danger is when those images come to subsume our understanding of the body or, frankly, any part of the body itself, because the body is almost always more

complex than any of these mechanical images. And that especially applies to the brain, and it applies to the body that relates the body as a whole as it relates to our knowing and thinking and and acting. So I mean, there's been lots of images of like, how, how what might we draw in from the language of mechanism to describe the brain? Is it is it a computer? Is

it a neural network? Um, what is it? And I think all of these images have some benefit, but they always fall short because the brain and and and the body and and and the mind as like the as our, our our our ability to extend not only to our own bodies, but also to the bodies of others always eludes the mechanistic images that we might apply to them. So my my complaint in the book, and I make clear that in I kind of use the machine metaphor, is something that I want to in many ways oppose.

But I do think that there are times when mechanistic thinking can be helpful and the medical model can be very helpful, uh, which I have to describe more in detail. But but I think it's the danger is when we reduce everything to mechanistic thinking or reduce everything to the idea that we can understand mental health problems, for example, only by recourse to more and better elucidation of what's

happening in the brain, I think. I think our language always comes to an end, and we're left with some mystery that exceeds our ability to to name it. Yeah.

We are always, uh, a hammer. Uh, doesn't The user of the hammer may have a purpose for it, but the hammer doesn't have a purpose. It doesn't. It doesn't seek out. Yeah. No machine seeks out its own purpose. It has to come from outside. And yet, what it means to be a human being is we are pursuing what we think is going to be good for us. Unfortunately, we're not very good at knowing what's good for us. Yeah. Um, yeah. And that can be a that can be framed as sin.

It could be framed as bad mental health. I mean, those are I shouldn't say framed. I mean, some ways that we are bad at knowing what's good for us manifests in what's traditionally been called sin. And some of our pursuit of what's bad for us is falls into the category of mental ill mental health. Is that is that fair to say?

these internal principles that are given in creation. So plants can, can seek the sun and can absorb nutrients and can find ways to, to reproduce and, and animals also, and human beings also, and human beings. For Aquinas, unique among all creatures are those that can not only, uh, do the the kinds of creaturely tasks of, of growing and, uh, feeding and procreating and, and other things, but also can order our lives by, uh, according to God's ordering of

the world. And so and so for Aquinas, humans have this God given capacity that he referred to as the intellectual, um, faculty of the soul, to, uh, to know God and to be able to know, uh, God's ordering of the world so as to be able to regulate and to order our lives accordingly. And of course, uh, we always do that imperfectly. We do that imperfectly, in part because

we're finite creatures like we are embodied. And and the fact that we're embodied means that we always are dealing with a kind of creaturely limitation, but also we're wounded by sin. And so we find ourselves distracted in various ways and unable to unable to see the truth of God and unable to order our lives according to the

things of God. And of course, for Aquinas, as a Christian, you know the answer to that begins with God's grace, that God in grace, specifically in the grace that comes to us in in Jesus Christ, it enables us to be able to, uh, to, to, to have within ourselves the capacity to once again find, um, connection with union, with knowledge of God and God's ordering of the world so as to be able then to to progress into the life of God. And of course, Aquinas understood all

of human life, ultimately, as as God's good creatures. We're from God as as our creator and as the one who has loved us into existence. We find ourselves now on a journey from God to God, and at the

end of our lives is in the life of God. Um, in, uh, the the beatific vision and, uh, union and praise of God that we, we find ultimately and perfectly only in the life to come, but we find in part in this life and even just a glimpse of that, uh, in this life is, um, is is an incredible blessing for us.

frogs and human beings. Um, without understanding four dimensions of his existence, um, one would be the material dimension or material cause, which is basically the matter of which we're composed. It basically means that, like, I'm sitting right here at this desk and no one, no other creature can sit exactly where I am because I'm here. They'd have to push me aside to be able to do so. Um, another would be the formal dimension or formal cause. And

and by that it means how is the matter configured? Like, what's the shape and form that matter takes. So in this case, uh, the form of the matter of my body is not just the it's not just a human body, but it's specifically me. We're in Kinghorn. This, you know, as all of us are a kind of unrepeatable, unique, uh, person. And, uh, he also understood the efficient, efficient cause is like those things that have enabled us to grow into the kind

of creatures that we are. So that obviously begins, you know, with the first moment of our conception and development. But it continues and there's a lot of different ways to understand that. And then finally, he said, you can't understand what a thing is without considering what he considered Or final cause, or the ends and goals toward which something

is directed. Um, this is clear. Like, let's say that you're, like, in a museum or going through an old, you know, drawer in a house that's been neglected for a long time. And you find you find something that clearly at some point had a function, but you don't know what it was. And you're like, I can see this thing in front of me, but I don't know what it is. What do we mean when we say we don't know what it is? Like, we can see it's maybe, maybe a a piece of metal that looks kind of sharp, but

not a knife. And like, we can describe that. But until somebody says, oh, that's a letter opener, you know, then you don't actually know what it is like. And that, that, that applied to an artifact, something that humans have made is an example of how sometimes to know to know what something is, you have to know what it's for.

And Aquinas would have said the same thing about creatures is that, you know, we know in some ways what something is based on what it's for and specifically the the purposes and goals that, that constitute the life of that creature. And so and so we we know what a what a snake is, or what a frog is, or what a tree is, in part by what those

creatures do. And and we know what a human being is, in part because human beings are those that live a human life that humans characteristically live, and a life of excellence and, and that, uh, in, in some ways, to know somebody, to know, to know a person is not just to know, like what's in what matter they're composed of, or even what their body looks like, or how it's configured or what brought that body into being. But it's to know something about about them, like what kind of

life are they pursuing? And that, I argue, is you can't reduce that to chemistry like you have to then to engage in story and narrative and, and and that's what I mean by these are moral questions. You can't ever get into a neurobiology lab or a, you know, physical chemistry lab and say, oh, now I understand Jonathan Rogers, because I can see every way, every cell of his body is put together because, frankly, you could see all of that. But unless. Unless they knew of you as

a as an artist, you know, as a teacher. Um, as as someone who has had a long career in literature and, and understand what that matters to you, they're not going to know you, nor any of us in those ways.

not a philosopher of science. I'm not certainly not a philosopher of biology. But there are those within the field of biology who argue that as much as, as, uh, some might want to strip like purposes and, and, uh, and final causes away that, that actually especially when you get into the, the, into living things, um, you actually can't do so and still make sense of the field. So I think there is some diversity of thought.

So now modern psychology is actually a pretty diverse field where you have, uh, the people don't frame it in this way, but but they, they're often thinking of the irreducibility of, of story and narrative and, and purposes and goals as, as part of understanding, like what it means to, to view a human being. So again, that's a way of saying you just you just can't get rid of teleology or the idea of like to understand something, you have to understand what it's heading toward or what it's for.

he called freedom of indifference. So this idea would be that this this would be the kind of idea of freedom as just the capacity to do anything that we want to have, like perfect ability to choose our own path, um, without any other constraints. And he said, that's, that's a kind of a kind of freedom that's that's treasured in our modern world. But it's not the Christian, the best Christian understanding of freedom. Opposed to that is what he

called freedom for excellence. That actually does involve constraint and it involves law and it involves disciplines. It involves actually submitting ourselves in some ways to, uh, to certain kinds of authority. And and yet the freedom that emerges in freedom for excellence is, is is not the freedom to be, to be, um, free of any other kind of constraint.

But it's the freedom to live a life that's consistent with what's good and and that in living a life consistent with what's good, aiming toward what's true and what's good and what's beautiful, we actually find a kind of growth of interior freedom to be able to, to, to pursue those things, um, with joy and with relative ease and in a way that actually we find the growth

of freedom in that freedom for excellence. So when, when Aquinas talks about, uh, agency or when I use the word agency to describe Aquinas view, it's agency is not just like freedom from any kind of constraint, but it's specifically the growth of the ability to act for purposes and goals in the world that in some ways we are the seat. Or he would have, said the principium,

the originator of our actions. So how when I pursue a relationship or a new academic opportunity in my role as a professor, or a new clinical opportunity in my role as a physician, or, um, you know, do something different with my church or something like that. How am I doing so in a way that I am choosing to do so based on reasons that are good. I'm not I'm not constrained or coerced by others, or especially

by my own internal dynamics. But but to be able to do so, to freely choose to pursue a path that's consistent with, um, with what's good and, uh, and we grow in our ability to do that. And so and so someone who is, um, who is, uh, for example, you know, in the, in the vice grip of um, of addiction or, or a kind of substance use disorder finds their agency constrained. They can actually choose to do things,

but they can't choose freely. They find themselves like the range of action, the capacity to be that agent who's able to freely act for purposes and goals is constrained. When somebody is in a situation of significant social deprivation, you know, they're incarcerated or they're in a really untenable financial situation or unstable housing. Also, their agency is constrained

because of these external things that happen. So so the growth of agency is in part related to external factors, but it's also related to like how we are, how we orient ourselves toward what's good. And for for Aquinas. Uh, I mean, this podcast is called habit. And for Aquinas, habits are are grooves of our of our thinking and acting that, uh, that that enable us to then be able to think and act in particular ways with ease and pleasure and, uh, and habits that are consistent with

what's good. Are called virtues. Habits that distract us and that enclose us are called vices. And so for Aquinas, the moral life is about the cultivation of habits that enable us to act toward what's good and true and beautiful, and ultimately toward God and toward the life of God. And to be able to do so with with ease and pleasure. And that's that's why I think the language of virtue can often seem kind of kind of patronizing

and moralizing. But I think the language of virtue is really important for thinking about mental health, but also about, you know, the work of, of art because it because it involves what does it mean to be able to, to act in a way that's free and open and and open to the world as it is?

I think, doesn't actually convey what Aquinas means. Uh, two, two virtues. One would be the virtue of prudence. Like when we talk, we think about prudence. One is it's a very kind of Victorian archaic term, but also it it tends to convey like to be prudent is to be cautious, to be constantly, like almost afraid to act because we're wanting to be prudent. But for Aquinas, the virtue of prudence or prudence. Prudentia. Um, was he understood

it as a cardinal virtue? And it basically is the capacity. In complex situations, to be able to step into difficult situations and to just have. A kind of ability to sense what the right thing is to do. So think of somebody who. You know, is just good at what they do. They can step into a room where there's tension and they just know what to say and what to do. They can step into a difficult relationship and be like, I think, I, I think I have some

sense of what needs to happen here. That's what prudence is for Aquinas, and it's what we all want for ourselves. And when you see it in somebody else, it's really beautiful.

and that is part of what self-control is. But for Aquinas, self-control fundamentally has to do first with like, what does it mean to care well for ourselves, to give our bodies what they what our bodies actually need instead of what we what we think we need? That actually makes it harder for us in the long run. And so, so a different understanding. Self-control is like, how can I actually learn to care for my body in a way that actually is sustainable and good and healthy, you know?

And so those are the different ways in which, like reframing virtus away from just like things that seem, um, you know, You know, patronizing and moralizing toward things that seem life giving and freeing, I think is really important for us.

That's right. Um, as I align myself with, with reality and resist the temptation to believe that reality is, you know what I want it to be, or reality is, um, or, you know, the desire to bend reality to to my own purposes. Yeah. Um, which I think maybe in some ways, uh, well, I guess that's guile. Um, yeah. That that tendency to to bend, to attempt to bend reality to my own purposes. Um. That's right. But the idea that there is a reality that's outside us and I didn't invent and I can,

as I conform to that, I'm prudent. And I know, you know, I can be the best tow truck driver in the world because I, um, am aligned with reality. And I'm. And I've stepped into a situation where people feel unmoored. I mean, there's a car accident makes you feel unmoored from reality. And this tow truck driver comes in and says, you know, I yeah, he's he's more Yeah. Maud, I guess, is the word I'm looking for.

just notice what's around you. They include a kind of awareness of the past, an ability to look toward the future. Does include some amount of caution, like not acting too rashly, but it also involves a kind of freedom to be able to act. It involves, uh, teachable ness, you know,

said docility or docility, the ability to learn. So again, like when we think about, like, now that we're having all these debates in our culture about higher education, for example, you know, and like, what is the point of education? I think some of what Aquinas writes about, like these integral parts of prudence as like things that we want students to cultivate, you know, awareness and reflection and teachable

ness and, you know, and caution. And I think there's some there's a lot of wisdom there for for teachers, I think as well.

my in my mind. And maybe after Descartes, an idea, something that's actually inside my cranium, you know, in the in the neural networks inside my head.

different thinkers. But in a chapter on René Descartes, who I mentioned earlier, um, he makes the point that, uh, that for Plato the ideas were like existing in the world of ultimate reality. And so knowledge was in some ways the confirmation of the mind or participation of, of in, in the mind of that that involves participation in the

world of ideas. Um, Christian thinkers like Augustine and especially Aquinas, had a slightly different understanding of ideas as is those things that that were like in some ways, um, part of God's mind. And so it kind of talks about the divine ideas as, um, as ideas that in some ways were part of were cognized by God, but also the ideas became, some have argued ideas are like exemplar

causes in the world. And so and so, God, there's a divine idea that is something like an idea of a particular creature, and that the creation of particular creatures, like, flows from those divine ideas. Creation Aquinas always understood creation as different from the. The creator is different from the creation. There's always that distinction. But yet, uh, creatures can form in some ways to exemplar ideas in the mind of God.

And when Aquinas talked about like reason, like he often would talk about God's reason, God's ratio, which is in some ways God's providential ordering of the world that participates in God's mind. So in in all of those eras of human history in the early early church. In the, uh, in in the medieval era, to, um, to have ideas was in some ways to participate in something real outside of yourself and ultimately to find yourself in some ways, maybe even united in some way, you know, to the

mind of God. Uh, so, so ideas are something that you, that you discover in the sense of, like I discovered a mountain that I didn't realize was near me. You know, there are things outside of you that, oh, I'm so happy to have, like, come into contact with this thing

outside of myself. Whereas for Descartes, um, Descartes rejected that as a, as a any any idea that, um, that the meaning of things or the purposes of things are known within the things themselves that direct us to guide Descartes uh, substituted that with a representational approach to knowledge where, where ideas were things that not only we formed within ourselves by our own, like mental activity, but that we could then gain certainty of, as in some ways representing

the world or the reality that's outside of us, which he understood as a world of space and extension. So Taylor argues that since Descartes, we've tended to see ideas as, as like things that are ours. Like, I had an idea. This is my idea. Um, it's it's inside me. I can patent my idea. I can write about and copyright my idea because it's mine. And, uh, and he says that's just not the way that, uh, human beings would

have thought before the enlightenment. And that's that's Taylor's argument. Uh, and I find that very interesting.

a well-lived human life? And that's something that we don't often want to talk about. In psychiatry.

I list seven, I call them natural goods of mental health. um, and their personal and bodily security, positive regard for oneself and one's life, the capacity for a full range of emotion, the capacity for finding meaning, um, personal, purposeful and engaging activity, the capacity for intimate and fulfilling interpersonal relationships, and the ability to respond flexibly and creatively to challenges. And those are those are, you know, that's not meant to be

an absolute comprehensive list. There may be others that people would add, but that kind of gets to the core of what I think modern psychologists, psychiatrists, theorists, when they talk about mental health, what they're getting to, um, and it's a good list. I think Christians can affirm that all of those are things that we'd want for ourselves, we'd want for our children, we'd want for our students and our, you know, and our colleagues and our friends,

our neighbours. Um, I think the problem with with that, though, is that is that if if any of those one things is pursued for its own sake, if I live my whole life just pursuing personal security. Then I become that becomes the goal of my life, and I end up making decisions that might surprise my security, but at the cost of my relationships, or at the cost of others who are made more, less secure by my security. If we if we spend our lives pursuing intimate and

fulfilling interpersonal relationships, then great. Like, we can pursue those. But if the point is just if we're always asking like, is this relationship intimate and fulfilling enough? Like, am I? Have I arrived yet? Then we end up. We end up pursuing things. We value things too highly and and they end up kind of imploding in front of us sometimes.

And that can be the case with any of those goods as good as they are, you know, pursuing, you know, meaning like, you can you can live your life pursuing meaning. But then what happens when you, like all of a sudden get tired of pursuing meaning? So I think this is where Aquinas would say, all these are goods, but they're they're goods that always point us toward some other

good that is that we're always left desiring. And and he famously says, like, you know, wealth is good, but it's not good as an end in itself, you know. Honours are good, but it's not good as an end itself. Health is good. But if we if we live our lives just pursuing health, we're going to end up disappointed because the question is like, well, what is health for? And when we're and when we're we kind of keep pursuing this question of like, what is what is wealth for?

What are honors for what is health for what is mental health for? You know, what is what is excellence for? Then we end up finding that what we're ultimately longing for is, in some ways, something that can't be satisfied by any particular thing, because we have in ourselves this kind of natural desire for God that only God can fill.

And so, so Aquinas would say, as a Christian, and I think, you know, Christians can broadly affirm this, that our our ultimate fulfillment as human beings is found in pursuing and ultimately in being united with the life of God. That as before, we only find in, in, in full in the life to come. But we can find it

in part in this life. And so, so that's that's, I think, a way to frame what Christians are aiming for when we think about, um, the goal of human life, um, as in some ways, if God is like perfect in God's self, if God is supremely happy, um, then in some ways we're invited to participate in, in God's life. Uh, so if God is if God is truly blessed, then we can find in this life the kind of participation

in the blessedness that God is and God's blessing. So that's why when I when I try to think about how to translate aquinas's Latin term beatitude, which would be a kind of his interpretation of Aristotle's term eudaimonia, which is often translated happiness or flourishing. I think both of those are good, but they're not sufficient. So I render that term as participation in blessing. We live our lives, um, pursuing in some ways, God, we, we, we find by participation,

like a glimpse of the life of God. That's participation in blessing. And that's that's the end and goal of our of our lives as human beings. Christians would say, and the goods of mental health are goods that we can find along the way. You know, I think I would say, yeah, I love that our life is not mental.

good is to say it's good that you exist. Yeah, it's good that you're in this world. And man, that's just something we need to be able to say to each other as God says it to us.

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