RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Pain does not suffer misprision: an inquiry into the presence and absence that is pain
JF Medical Humanities
JO J Med Humanit
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 59
OP 62
DO 10.1136/jmh.2003.000144
VO 30
IS 2
A1 J D Katz
YR 2004
UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/30/2/59.abstract
AB The reigning questions of metaphysics generate passion. These are questions such as concern death, a hereafter, and the meaning of suffering. They are questions that haunt us. Philosophical inquiries into these topics are often constructed Socratically. In turn, such logical machinations are founded upon the belief that a discernible outcome or answer to metaphysical questions exists. Western thought labours under the tenet that the impasse of “unknowableness” can be bridged with the brute force of intellect. Pain is not only the motivation for metaphysical inquiry; it becomes the universal metaphor for loss. It absorbs displaced fears and becomes a vehicle for expressing a “lack”. The essence of pain, therefore, is negative. It is absence (and hence not an existence). Even though pain is a lack, however, we relate to it as if it were a presence that denies us of our passion for life.