The inner tension of pain and the phenomenology of evil

ABSTRACT

While there is no shortage of philosophical and theological occupations with the problem of evil and theodicy, the phenomenological basis from which the problem arises often gets lost in abstract accounts. In delimiting the case to physical pain, this article attempts to provide a perspective on the problem of evil following the lead from one of the problem’s sources. Through a phenomenological analysis of pain, the article highlights the inner tension that belongs to the experience of pain. This contradiction can be traced on various levels: pain as sensational impression (both given to consciousness and resisting integration), as bodily occurrence (both making the lived body emphatically mine and foreign), and as posing a question of meaning (both inviting a ‘Why?’ and contesting meaningfulness). This phenomenology of pain can provide a perspective on the origin and nature of the problem of evil: both why intellectual responses must arise and why it cannot reach an adequate solution.

KEYWORDS:

• Evil
• pain
• phenomenology
• body

Notes

1. Ricoeur, Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology, 58.

2. Hick, Evil and the God of Love, 6–11.

3. Even if the distinction between physical evil (Übel) and moral or metaphysical evil (Böse) is valid, there are important cases, such as pain, where the physical evil gives rise to the moral and metaphysical questions of evil. Cf. Dalferth, Das Böse, 1–3.

4. For a defense of pain as intrinsically bad, see Goldstein “Pleasure and Pain: Unconditional, Intrinsic Value,” 258–258.

5. Scarry, The Body in Pain, 5

6. Geniusas, “The Origins of the Phenomenology of Pain,” 14–15.

7. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, 407–08.

8. Henry, Incarnation, 46.

9. Ibid., 58.

10. Ibid., 58–59.

11. Scarry, The Body in Pain, 53

12. Henry, Incarnation, 58.

13. Ibid., 61.

14. Henry, “Phenomenology of Life,” 106.

15. Levinas, Time and the Other, 69.

16. Levinas, “Useless suffering,” 156.

17. Ibid., 156.

18. Levinas, “Transcendence and Evil,” 173.

19. Leder, The Absent Body, 4, 74.

20. Marion, In Excess, 91–92.

21. Henry, Incarnation, 4. Cf. 110–12.

22. For the relation between body, movement and sensation, see Henry, Philosophy and the Phenomenology of the Body, 77–83.

23. Henry, Incarnation 4

24. I am alluding to Henry’s book Material Phenomenology where ‘material’ alludes to Husserl’s ‘matter’ and hyle, not to carnal materiality, as in flesh and blood.

25. Falque, The Metamorphosis of Finitude, 77.

26. Falque, “This Is My Body: Contribution to the Philosophy,” 283

27. See note 5above.

28. Bakan, Disease, Pain, and Sacrifice, 74–75.

29. Falque, “This is My Body,” 282.

30. Dalferth, Das Böse, 21–27.

31. Nemo, Job and the Excess of Evil, 146.

32. Grüny, Zerstörte Erfahrung 266.

33. Levinas ‘Useless Suffering,’ 157. There is, however, an important sense in which useless suffering can open up to some sense – in the way it awakens responsibility in the Other, 165. “Transcendence and Evil,” 181.

34. Bakan, Disease, Paind, and Sacrifice, 57–58.

35. Ricoeur, Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology, 41–42.

36. Waldenfels, Antwortregister, 334–35.

37. See my Dahl, “Job and the Problem of Physical pain,” 49–51.

38. Levinas, “Useless Suffering,” 160.

39. Adorno, Metaphysics, 116–17.

40. Ibid., 68.

41. Marion, In Excess, 123–127.

42. Ibid., 99.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Espen Dahl

Espen Dahl is Professor of Systematic Theology at the UiT – The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. He has published extensively on philosophy of religion from within phenomenology, both classical and novel, and within ordinary language philosophy (Wittgenstein and Cavell).