Is Suffering a Useless Concept?

Abstract

“Suffering” is a central concept within bioethics and often a crucial consideration in medical decision making. As used in practice, however, the concept risks being uninformative, ambiguous, or even misleading. In this paper, we consider a series of cases in which “suffering” is invoked and analyze them in light of prominent theories of suffering. We then outline ethical hazards that arise as a result of imprecise usage of the concept and offer practical recommendations for avoiding them. Appeals to suffering are often getting at something ethically important. But this is where the work of ethics begins, not where it ends.

Keywords:

• Suffering
• clinical ethics
• medical decision making
• philosophy
• values
• flourishing

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

EL received Grants from the National Institute on Aging.

Notes

1 One could propose a counterfactual values-based theory, according to which one suffers when it is the case that one would be distressed by the threat to their values if they were aware. We will put this aside.

2 Moore (2023) notes other unique considerations in the context of end-of-life care for pediatric patients.

Additional information

Funding

Collaboration on this manuscript arose from the Philosophical Bioethics Seminar Series for the Greenwall Faculty Scholars Program funded by The Greenwall Foundation. Additionally, BK received funding related to this project from the Huntsman Mental Health Insititute Program in Psychiatric Ethics.