Held on April 2, 2014
This lecture by Dr. Christian Perring, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at St. John's University, examined the concept of unfitness in 1930s Germany that led to the Nazi persecution of people with mental illness and its relations in eugenic movements in other parts of Europe and the United States. Dr. Perring highlighted the serious issues facing psychiatry today and that need to be on guard against too uncritical an attitude to medicating psychiatry as inherently beneficial for society. He argued that these tensions and thoughts apply to any social system of regulation and categorization of people, and so the answer is not to avoid all categorization and differentiation but instead to proceed with it in a historically sensitive and compassionate fashion that is aware of its own fallibility.
Dr. Christian Perring is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at St. John's University. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton University and his areas of research are in the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology, philosophy of medicine, and medical ethics. He also has an active interest in philosophical counseling.
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