In his searing memoir, Night, Romanian-American author, educator, and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) recounts the moment when hunger ceased being a bodily sensation and instead became an ontological condition—one capable of eroding filial devotion, moral reasoning, and even the instinct to pray. “Bread, soup—these were my whole life,” he writes, reducing the human person…
Author: Peter A. DePergola II
Dr. Peter DePergola is System Director of Clinical Ethics, Chief of the Ethics Consultation Service, and Co-Chair of the Ethics Advisory Council, and Director of the Clinical and Organizational Rotations in Ethics (CORE) Programs at Hartford HealthCare. He serves concurrently as the Shaughness Family Chair for the Study of the Humanities, Associate Professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Director of the Undergraduate and Graduate Bioethics and Medical Humanities Programs, and Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Saint Augustine Center for Ethics, Religion, and Culture at Elms College. Dr. DePergola maintains secondary academic and research appointments at more than a dozen additional universities, associations, institutes, academies, and societies. He holds a BA in philosophy and religious studies from Elms College, an MTS in theological ethics from Boston College, and a PhD in healthcare ethics from Duquesne University. A current ThD candidate in neurotheological ethics at Pontifex University, Dr. DePergola completed a residency in neurocritical care ethics at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, a fellowship in neuropsychiatric ethics at Tufts University School of Medicine, and advanced training in neurothanatological ethics at Harvard Medical School.
Refusing to Tell the Polite Lie: Lessons on Courageous Veracity from Ivan Ilyich’s Ethicist
In Leo Tolstoy’s (1828–1910) masterful novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the lesser-known and often underappreciated character of Gerasim—a young, poor, uneducated peasant with the unenviable task of emptying Ivan’s chamber pot—serves as a subtle but powerful reminder of the moral imperative to be courageously veracious with those who wrestle with questions of meaning and…
Raymond’s Rule: Asking Questions that Matter Morally When They Matter Most
In his 1965 book, The Teaching of Reverence for Life, the nineteenth-century German-French polymath Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) thematically suggests that, in the evening of life, we must all confront the deep and painful question of whether we have given everything we were able to, and been everything we might have been, to the persons we…