Dualism in medicine, Christian theology, and the aging.

Distinguishing a person's soul or mind from a person's body describes dualism, the philosophical premise that fails to integrate the person as one, but instead leaves the person as two, usually as souland body or as mindand body. In dualism, one tends to think of the soul or the mind as the person and the body as an appendage. I argue that 1) dualism is rampant in medicine; 2) that Christian theology has fundamentally opposed it, and 3) that cultural dualism today threatens the aging in particular. To deal with this threat, I argue that the moral task of being human is to become one in mind and body. That is, I argue that the unity of the person which is the unity of the mind and body is not really a metaphysical given, but rather the goal or end of being human.