LIVING WELL RIGHT TO THE END - Philosophy and Ethics 2017 Annual Meeting
26th to 29th Jun 2017
Living Well Right to the End
Rydal Hall, near Ambleside Cumbria
26th - 29th June 2017
Living Well Right to the End... Sounds impossible…?
How to live well at all can prove elusive and has been much debated for thousands of years. Is it to do with physical health, or pleasure, or a general sense of wellbeing, or happiness, or fulfilment, or meaning, or is it merely the absence of suffering? Can we somehow enable those we care for to achieve a level of wellbeing even as they decline into terminal illness or perhaps face the simple fact of old age and the prospect of death? We may be confronted with the ethical dilemma of quality versus quantity of life and the prolongation of suffering. Can we achieve a measure of wellbeing in our own lives?
Our meeting this time takes place in the beautiful surroundings of Rydal Hall amongst the lakes and fells of Cumbria where we will be considering all of these issues. Our speakers include:
- Prof. Karol Sikora, Dean of Buckingham Medical School, speaking on ‘Living with the Uncertainty of Cancer’
- Dr Sara Booth, Lecturer at Cambridge University and at King’s College in London, who has researched breathlessness and has an interest in the characteristics of wellbeing
- Kate Binnie, a music therapist who uses music and song in her work to relieve suffering
- Steve Johnson, a Buddhist teacher, mindfulness trainer and healthcare chaplain in hospital and hospice settings
- Dr Emmylou Rahtz, who has a PhD in Psychiatry and is interested in how healing can be achieved
- Fr Andy Graydon will speak about the concept of ‘deep acceptance’ around living and dying
- Dr Jeremy Swayne’s talk ‘Coming Alive at Last’ will deal with enrichment and wholeness despite serious or even terminal illness.
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination
Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person (1987), p. 187.