Is It Possible to Say 'Yes' to Traumatic Experiences?: A Philosophical Approach to Human Suffering (original) (raw)
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Psychoanalytic Psychology, 2010
Robert Stolorow describes his book Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Reflections (2007) as a "project (that) has occupied (him) now for more than 16 years" (p. 45) starting six months after the tragic death to metastatic cancer of his 34-year-old wife Daphne ("Dede") Stolorow, on February 23, 1991. His book exemplifies a value, deeply shared by the author and his late wife, that of "staying rooted in one's own genuine painful emotional experiences" (p. 46). The volume is very dense (50 pages of text, total), the product of 16 years of intense and sensitive reflection. It condenses in very short order the history of his intersubjective perspective on developmental trauma, (the outcome of invalidating malattunement in the "parent-child mutual regulation system" lending to unbearable affect states in search of a "relational home"), his theory of the phenomenology of trauma (the shattering of "absolutisms of everyday life"), trauma's temporality (trauma freeze frames the past and the future into an eternal present), and, finally an analysis of the ontological or universally constitutive aspect of trauma in our lives. This, he argues, following Heidegger (1927) is because we are always in a state of "Being-toward-Death." Much of the last half of his book is based on Heidegger's writings that are then woven into Stolorow's theory of trauma. In this latter manner, Stolorow conflates what has been commonly referred to as Heidegger's concept of "death anxiety" with his own conception of trauma, a controversial point to be addressed later in this review. All of the ideas Stolorow presents in this volume are autobiographically rooted in his examination of the traumatic and the enduring painful loss Dede's death has played in his life. His volume is an exegesis on how he came to terms with this deeply personal loss from which he arrives at a theoretical formulation axiomatic of certain universal propositions about trauma. In positing these universal ontological givens, Stolorow somewhat befuddles his previous intersubjective system theory regarding the uniqueness of human reactions, a position grounded in an epistemological stance of "perspectival realism" (Stolorow, Orange, & Atwood, 2002). This conundrum is amplified by his lack of commentary on what at times seem like contradictions between his earlier epistemological position and the current universalisms emergent in his ontological one in his efforts at delineating an original theory of traumatology.
A Redemptive Analysis of Suffering
Philosophy Study, 2015
The notion of suffering carries with it aspects which are private and individual on the one hand, and social and lingual on the other. I would pay attention to the latter part of the suffering notion, where the notion of suffering is recognized to be primitive by almost all the theories of human values. This primitive character allows a commensurable basis on the basis of which most plural theories share something in common to talk objectively to each other. In this paper, I would like to offer three arguments in order to advance a thesis that one's suffering is redemptive of others. First, the conservation law of mass says that matter of a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be differently rearranged. This may be applied to the experience of suffering, to allow the conservation law of suffering: My unjust self-interest costs pains in others to the level of the same amount but if I voluntarily suffer a sacrifice, others will have their pains lightened to the analogous level. Second, notion of yin-yang helps to support the redemptive thesis of suffering. The notion says that all things in the reality consist of two complementary opposite capacities that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. Then, my acceptance of suffering and the decrease of other's pain are two complementary capacities of one reality. Third, any person is responsible for his own act, so is a society as a whole. Then, as an individual restores his damaged person, when he commits a crime, by being suffered or punished, a society restores itself to its own proper state, when any member of the society is wronged, by suffering communally in one way or other.
Autobiography of existence: on suffering and the emergence of moral agency
2012
This thesis is an autobiographical and reflective account of suffering. The goal of this study is to reflect on the aspects that enable a person to find meaning and moral agency under adversity, and to further consider the implications of the role of education as an important mode of recovering and empowering such human agentic capacity so people can become ethically capable and responsible individuals and citizens. This work, historical and phenomenological in nature, offers an approach to thinking about what it means to be human, and it is an approach that illuminates appropriate ways of getting at how we understand ourselves. Such is the insight I am gathering from the philosophies and scholarship from East and West, both classical and modern. I point to, as examples of illuminating the nature of adversity and the meaning of being in the face of oppression, hardship, and tribulation, the ways of participation and becoming that many of us undertook during the Chinese Cultural Revolution as well as during the current time of natural catastrophes. In this study, I thus advance two positions. First, moral agency can be empowered in adversity and experiences of suffering may be seen as a necessary condition for such empowerment and development of human subjectivity, and hence, for humanity. Second, great trial and hardship must be considered as specific educational situations of educating for wisdom and ethical being. I hope to argue that the experience of suffering itself offers life's most substantive and substantial teaching; I ponder these questions as potential topics for further study: How can our contemporary education embrace suffering and pain of human experience? How should we orient our education toward this kind of teaching?" Thus, with this thesis I hope to offer new ways of thinking about hardship, adversity and suffering and to call for efforts to educate for robust agentic capacity, hence envisioning educating young people from the potential to the actual, from the implicit to the explicit, from being to becoming. This work is thus intended to further conversations within philosophy of education and moral education.
Suffering and the Emergence of Meaning in Life
2021
Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists pose deep and difficult questions about pain and suffering and try to provide answers to these questions: What is pain? Is pain in the brain? Is there meaning in suffering? What makes pain unpleasant? This article provides a rich and wide-ranging exploration of these questions and offers important new insights into the philosophy of pain. To complement the author's reflection on pain, suffering and the emergence of meaning in life, he has gathered information about the said topic from various sources that could enrich the article and have reflected some concepts that help us understand the topic better.
Opening : Suffering Relational and Redemptive
2016
The notion of suffering carries with it aspects which are private and individual on the one hand, and social and lingual on the other. I would pay attention to the latter part of the suffering notion, where the notion of suffering is recognized to be primitive by almost all the theories of human values. This primitive character allows a commensurable basis on the basis of which most plural theories share something in common to talk objectively to each other. In this paper, I would like to offer three arguments in order to advance a thesis that one’s suffering is redemptive of others. First, the conservation law of mass says that matter of a closed system can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be differently rearranged. This may be applied to the experience of suffering, to allow the conservation law of suffering: My unjust self-interest costs pains in others to the level of the same amount but if I voluntarily suffer a sacrifice, others will have their pains lightened...
Problems of Suffering. The Philosophical Perspective compressed (1)
International Journal of Religion and Culture, A Journal of the Association of the African Theologians, 2015
Abstract This work aims at looking at suffering and the problems of suffering from a philosophical perspective. Suffering or pain in a broad sense is an individual basic affective experience of unpleasant things and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. It might be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity from mild to intolerable. The work has at the same time, looked at what causes suffering from the point of view of religion and cultural beliefs to back up the philosophical beliefs on this. The implications and or impacts of suffering on the sufferer and the society have been highlighted. Another interesting aspect of this work that is given attention to is the reason why suffering persists; whether God is unable to avert suffering in a world He created and then seek for ways it can be mitigated or eradicated. Also, suggestions are n1ade where necessary.
The World According to Suffering
The Philosophy of Suffering, 2019
On the face of it, suffering from the loss of a loved one and suffering from intense pain are very different things. What makes them both experiences of suffering? I argue it’s neither their unpleasantness nor the fact that we desire not to have such experiences. Rather, what we suffer from negatively transforms the way our situation as a whole appears to us. To cash this out, I introduce the notion of negative affective construal, which involves practically perceiving our situation as calling for change, registering this perception with a felt desire for change, and believing that the change is not within our power. We (attitudinally) suffer when negative affective construal is pervasive, either because it colours a large swath of possibilities, as in the case of anxiety, or because it narrows our attention to what hurts, as in the case of grief. On this view, sensory or bodily suffering is a special case of attitudinal suffering: the unpleasantness of pain causes pervasive negative affective construal. Pain that doesn’t negatively transform our world doesn’t make for suffering.