Living Witnesses and Moral Agency

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how the life and work of anthropologist, physician, and global health equity activist Paul Farmer provides a model for theologically-informed moral agency that transgresses the roles established by current hierarchies of being, knowledge, and power in order to relieve suffering without reproducing the iniquitous circulation of power and resources. Latin American liberation theology’s “preferential option for the poor” is Farmer’s primary moral lens. The chapter examines how Farmer lives out this commitment in his work as a health care provider alongside communities around the world fighting to survive in the face of grievously iniquitous social and economic conditions; and also as a university professor at one of the world’s wealthiest and most elite institutions of higher education. The analysis engages womanist ethicist Marcia Riggs’ conception of a mediating ethic to characterize Farmer’s moral praxis: it is a move toward justice that generates momentum in the face of a complex moral dilemma. The chapter contends that Farmer’s moral praxis contributes to the field of theological ethics by critically engaging the fraught intersection of positionality and agency, and by framing moral responses to the extremely challenging current social, economic, and political conditions in Haiti, where Farmer’s work began in the 1980s.