Pain — Challenge and Impetus

Philosophic–Theological Essay on Pain

Abstract

Pain is, in a sense, a polysemantic phenomenon, an inevitable companion to every human biography, a multidimensional problem, a challenging topic — more precisely, a mystery... As such, pain raises questions and demands answers. In philosophy (that of Epicurus through Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, I. Kant, J. Bentham, M. Scheler, E. Husserl, H. Bergson, M. Mearlau –Ponty, Sartre to E. Levinas, L. Wittgenstein, M. Heidegger, K. Jaspers, H.–G. Gadamer, D.J. Chalmers, Th. Nagel and S. Kripke) the topic of pain has often been excluded from »metaphysical « questioning. Thus, today we tend to reflect upon pain only as a natural phenomenon and a medical issue. However, pain is a sign of something more profound. It implies human finitude, fragility, vulnerability and mortality... It indicates that there is something amiss within... Thus, it is the beginning of a deviation from its very self: a stimulus to awaken us to the issues of ethics and religion, and especially to Christianity.