Notes for a phenomenology of pain and suffering2418

Abstract

The same enunciation of the title of this writing, already announces how difficult and problematic it is. Indeed, human pain, in its different forms, manifestations and levels, has been the object of treatment by different disciplines, from literature to medicine, from philosophy to psychology, from theology to anthropology, etc.

            This article will approach this problem and its concomitant, no less tortuous and complex, namely the suffering, from a philosophical point of view and, more specifically, phenomenological, using as a theoretical framework a personal appropriation of some theses by Agustín Serrano de Haro, Miguel García Baró, Stanislaw Grygiel and Antonio Damasio.

            The justification for this choice is mainly due to the importance that phenomenology granted him, if not from the beginning of his formulation, during a good part of his gestation and, of course, in a large portion of the epigones that were derived from the original Husserlian nucleus, to the subject of corporality and the structures of affectivity inherent to it, reassessing a problematic that, during a good part of modernity, with interesting but isolated exceptions, had been forgotten as a philosophical problem worthy of analysis, that is, the body, its power to be affected in a negative sense, and the elaboration or reflection of such affectivity and passivity that soon led to a deep reflection about the meaning of life, death, pain and suffering, beyond a mere perspective biological, scientist or naturalist.

            It will be try to present a general perspective on the meaning of human pain in relation to suffering, trying to distinguish between both instances; then I will focus mainly on what we can call a "phenomenology of pain and suffering" and, finally, I will close with a reflection on the problem of the meaning of these experiences -that phenomenologically they are-, answering the question of whether human pain and the concomitant suffering has a meaning and there is a sense in it, or it is a purely negative element that the human being must avoid at all costs. The analysis here, obviously, is not conducted on the purely descriptive level of the phenomenon of pain and suffering, but rather tries to account for the meaning and meaning of this phenomenon, based on the appropriation of different significant authors in this regard, not all necessarily phenomenologists, and go beyond the immanent plane of the mechanism of the painful condition and its response, as well as going beyond suffering as a mere expression of passivity or receptivity of human embodiment in response to the painful phenomenon.