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For
my sisters, Catherine and Frances
Acknowledgements
This book is the result of work done during two research projects hosted at the University of Glasgow, and funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The first—the Pain Project—ran from January 2012 to April 2013, under the aegis of Samuel Newlands and Michael Rea’s The Problem of Evil in Modern and Contemporary Thought initiative at the University of Notre Dame. The second—the Value of Suffering Project—ran from September 2013 to May 2016 (Grant ID 44167). A period of sabbatical leave from the University of Glasgow during the latter project enabled me to complete a draft of the book. I am very grateful to the John Templeton Foundation, Samuel Newlands and Michael Rea, and the University of Glasgow for their help and support in writing this book.
My biggest intellectual debts are owed to my companions in pain and suffering: David Bain was co-principal investigator, and Jennifer Corns was postdoctoral fellow, on each project. I have benefitted immensely from their feedback, discussions, help, advice, and friendship, and am very grateful indeed to them both. (David and Jen are exceptionally smart and knowledgeable, although with very different philosophical approaches. To paraphrase Derek Smalls: they are two distinct types of visionaries, like fire and ice, basically. I felt my role in the projects to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water.) I also benefitted a great deal from hearing about the research of many people associated with the projects, and from discussing my own work with them, at our workshops and conferences over the four-year period. Particular thanks are due to Catharine Abell, Marilyn McCord Adams, Clare Allely, José Araya, Murat Aydede, Brock Bastian, Tim Bayne, Hagit Benbaji, Victoria Braithwaite, Ben Bramble, Havi Carel, Jonathan Cohen, Garrett Cullity, Matthew Fulkerson, Verena Gottschling, Kelly Hamilton, Valerie Hardcastle, Chris Heathwood, Hilla Jacobson, Jeanette Kennett, Colin Klein, Richard Krueger, Colin Leach, Siri Leknes, Stéphane Lemaire, Manolo Martinez, Olivier Massin, Tom McClelland, Katherine Meadowcroft, Paul Noordhof, Carolyn Price, Jesse Prinz, Kevin Reuter, Luke Russell, Abraham Sapién Córdoba, Timothy Schroeder, Tasia Scrutton, Adam Shriver, Joel Smith, Maja Spener, Fabrice Teroni, Lucy Tomlinson, Frédérique de Vignemont, Lauren Ware, Michael Wheeler, and Alan Wilson. Brock Bastian and Colin Klein, Verena Gottschling, Kevin Reuter, Tasia Scrutton, and Frédérique de Vignemont deserve additional thanks for all of their work organizing and hosting Value of Suffering events outside Glasgow—in Sydney, Lake of Bays, Bochum, Leeds, and Paris, respectively.
Some of the ideas in Chapter 2 first appeared in my paper ‘Feeling Bad and Seeing Bad’ in the journal Dialectica in 2015. Parts of the book have been presented to audiences in Bristol, Budapest, Edinburgh, Geneva, Hull, Knoxville, Lisbon, London,
Manchester, Melbourne, Mexico City, Munich, New York, Regensburg, Sydney, Tübingen, and Wagga Wagga. Many thanks to the audiences at all of these for their questions and comments. Particular thanks are due to the following people for their conversations, criticism, feedback, and tolerant listening, all of which have made this book better than it otherwise would have been: Amalia Amaya, Jason Baehr, Monika Betzler, Laura Candiotto, Mary Carman, Julien Deonna, Sabine Döring, Antony Duff, Eva-Maria Düringer, Alex Feldt, Steve Finbow, Georgi Gardiner, Jon Garthoff, Richard Gregory, Stephen Grimm, Daniel Halliday, Olbeth Hansberg, Eranda Jayawickreme, Karen Jones, Emily Kidd White, Amy Kind, Alycia LaGuardia-LoBianco, Jörg Löschke, Maksymillian del Mar, Margaret Moore, Adam Morton, Kevin Mulligan, Courtney Murphy, Tristram Oliver-Skuse, Renny O’Shea, Duncan Pritchard, Peter Railton, Catherine Robb, Benedetta Romano, François Schroeter, Laura Schroeter, Clerk Shaw, Christine Tappolet, and Cain Todd.
I am extremely fortunate to work in a department that manages to combine philosophical excellence with outstanding collegiality. So I’m very grateful to colleagues old and new—and in particular to David Bain, Jennifer Corns, Robert Cowan, Ben Colburn, Hugh Lazenby, Stephan Leuenberger, Fiona Macpherson, Neil McDonnell, Glen Pettigrove, Adam Rieger, and Alan Weir—for their philosophical support and friendship throughout the years, and for their conversations (often the very same ones) in Stravaigin most Tuesday evenings.
Many thanks to Peter Momtchiloff at Oxford University Press for his help and support, and to the editorial and production teams at Oxford University Press for their hard work in preparing the book. I am particularly grateful to the very helpful feedback and suggestions from the two referees for the manuscript: Ian James Kidd and Christian Miller. The book has improved immensely as a result of their thoughtful, generous, and wise advice. Academic philosophy—and indeed, academic publishing— would wither and die without the care, attention, and other virtues of good citizenship that academics like Ian and Christian provide. Finally, my deepest thanks are due to my mother Dorothy, to my sisters Catherine and Frances, and to their families, for their love and support over very many years.
Introduction
Suffering is everywhere. Take chronic pain, for instance, which is classed as any pain lasting over three months. A recent study shows that chronic pain affects around two fifths of the UK population, or around 28 million adults.1 It is sometimes said that worldwide, 1.5 billion people suffer from chronic pain.2 Or consider hunger. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that between 2014 and 2016, 795 million people experienced chronic undernourishment, with 780 million of these people living in developing countries.3 Consider now figures for violent assault. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that one in three women worldwide will experience sexual violence in their lifetime.4 The NSPCC reports that one in fourteen children in the UK have been physically abused, with equally distressing figures apparent worldwide.5 Consider now all the myriad forms of physical suffering associated with illness and disease. To take one example from very many, in 2012 there were over 14 million new cases of cancer worldwide, with four in ten cases occurring in countries that are relatively low on the Human Development Index.6
Statistics about the range and extent of emotional suffering make equally grim reading. The WHO reports that 300 million people, of all ages, suffer from depression.7 Studies in the US and Europe show that around 25 per cent of adults experience chronic loneliness, in that they regularly feel lonely and unloved.8 The WHO also reports that 15.3 million people worldwide have drug use disorders.9 Similarly disturbing facts and figures could be cited for the enormous range of affective and emotional disorders that people experience. And we can add to this the negative emotional suffering that is part and parcel of everyday life: of grief, disappointment, shame, guilt; experiences of dreams unfulfilled and relationships unfulfilling, of hopes and bodies failing, of unsatisfying careers and unsatisfactory life stories. What this indicates is that suffering isn’t just
1 Fayaz, A., Croft, P., Langford, R., Donaldson, L., and Jones, G. (2016), ‘ Prevalence of Chronic Pain in the UK: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Population Studies’, British Medical Journal 6(6).
everywhere else. Even if we are fortunate enough to be free from chronic pain and starvation, lucky enough to avoid physical assault and emotional disorder, privileged enough to live in a society less oppressive and corrupt than most, suffering will be central to our lives, in one form or another.
Faced with all of these facts, we might ask the following question: why do we suffer? In one sense this is a question about the causes of suffering, and the answer is relatively straightforward. We suffer because our bodies malfunction, because of the wickedness of the countries controlling world trade and the distribution of resources, because of male sexual aggression and misogyny, because of social fragmentation and exclusion, because of consumer culture and its imposition of unrealistic expectations, because disasters happen through no one’s fault, because we can’t control the world and its ways.
In another sense, however, the question is a philosophical one. Here the issue is not so much the causes of suffering, but instead its meaning or point or value. Faced with the reality of suffering, its presence, to some degree or another, in all of our lives, we might wonder why we have evolved, or why we have been created, to experience misery in its many and diverse forms. On this interpretation, the question asks what purpose suffering serves, what good it does us. And the answer to the question in this guise is not straightforward at all. For on the one hand, we have the intuition—supported perhaps by reflection on the facts and figures cited above—that suffering has no value or meaning or point or purpose. Suffering is just terrible. Consider pain again. Nearly everyone agrees that pain is bad: indeed, if anything merits the status of a platitude in moral philosophy, the idea that pain is bad surely does.10 It might seem equally clear that the correct response to pain is to alleviate it, which suggests that it does no good, has no value. And what is true of pain seems true of other forms of suffering: despair, hunger, loneliness, grief, fatigue, disappointment, guilt, and shame are all bad as well, and we should also do what we can to alleviate these. There is no positive answer to the question of why we suffer, on this view; suffering serves no purpose, has no value or point, and so should be eradicated.
On the other hand, there is a rival intuition: that we would be considerably worse off if we didn’t suffer things like pain and remorse, hunger and shame. Those who are insensitive to pain don’t live very long, after all. Those who are incapable of feeling guilt and shame in response to wrongdoing and the violation of social norms will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to form and function in social relationships that are central to a happy life. We think that we ought to grieve when a loved one dies, that despair is appropriate when our dreams are shattered. Reflection on these facts might incline us to think that suffering has a point or purpose or meaning after all. On the one hand, it is essential for the provision of goods that are needed for happiness or
10 A classic statement of this idea, central to philosophical hedonism, is in Plato’s Protagoras, at 351b–c, where Socrates elicits from Protagoras a positive answer to the question: ‘And, I suppose, to live pleasantly is good, and unpleasantly, bad?’ John Stuart Mill, following and expanding on the hedonism of Jeremy Bentham, also famously claims: ‘By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.’ Mill, J. S. (1871), Utilitarianism, Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, p. 14.
well-being or flourishing.11 On the other, it is sometimes called for by actions and events, so that it would be bad if we didn’t suffer. Indeed, given these facts, it seems that an unthinking acceptance of the badness of suffering can blind us to the multitude of ways in which suffering is vital if our lives are to go well. So on this view there are a range of positive answers to the question of why we suffer.
I share this second intuition, and in this book I will develop an account of the value of suffering that explains its central importance in the lives of creatures like us. In particular, I will develop a virtue-theoretical perspective on the value of suffering. My central thesis is that suffering of various kinds is necessary for the cultivation and expression of many virtues, both individual and social, and that these virtues are essential for the flourishing of individual lives and social groups. Virtues are, after all, excellences of a person or group, and in particular are traits or dispositions that enable the individual or group to respond correctly in important spheres of human experience. Responding correctly will involve, in part, coping with life’s troubles and problems, as well as life’s blessings and good fortune.12 But it will also involve preventing harms and wrongs, and promoting goods and ends. If we think that the happy or flourishing life involves responding correctly to good and bad circumstances alike, then the virtues are necessary for such a life.
On my account, suffering is essential for virtue, and hence for responding correctly, in a number of ways. One is constitutive: I claim that dispositions to suffer constitute virtues of certain physical and emotional systems, and that forms of suffering play the important epistemic and motivational roles that virtue requires. In order to respond well to a range of negative objects and events, we need to be disposed to recognize the importance of objects and events, and be motivated appropriately to deal with them. For instance, it is vitally important for us to notice and deal with physical threat and damage. Physical pain, I argue, plays this dual epistemic-motivational role, and does so better than alternatives; as a result, a disposition to feel pain constitutes a virtue of the system that deals with physical threat and damage, and pain itself constitutes a virtuous motive. I argue that what is true of pain is also true of other kinds of suffering, both physical and emotional.
Another is developmental: suffering is necessary for the cultivation and expression of different categories of virtue that are also vital for a flourishing life. One is the set of virtues that constitute strength of character, and which are needed for the successful pursuit of valuable goals. Another is the set of virtues that constitute virtues of vulnerability, and which enable us to cope appropriately with illness, aging, and dependency. A third category is the moral virtues that govern and facilitate our relationships with others. Finally, I argue that suffering is necessary for the development of wisdom, the executive virtue that directs the other virtues and ultimately makes the good life possible.
11 In what follows I’ll use these terms interchangeably. Nothing of importance hangs on the terminology, in my view.
12 This general line on what virtues are is due to Martha Nussbaum. See Nussbaum, M. (1988), ‘NonRelative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13: 32–53.
A third way in which suffering is essential to virtue relates to its communicative capacity. For suffering is important for effectively conveying information about our virtuous feelings and attitudes to others, which is vital to the proper functioning and flourishing of relationships and groups. Through the imposition of suffering in judicial punishment, a state can communicate to its citizens its concern for their well-being and for the laws that are in place to protect them. This will facilitate social justice and security, and in so doing benefit all. Through suffering we can display and communicate love for another, and so deepen a loving relationship. And through suffering we can communicate our own strength and fortitude, and so promote faith and trust. These three levels are, moreover, interrelated: social virtues such as justice and trust will aid the development and expression of virtues of strength, vulnerability, morality, and ultimately wisdom; and these latter categories of virtue are themselves important if forms of suffering are to constitute virtuous motives. For instance, we need to understand the nature of our wrongdoing, and hence be wise with respect to it, if our disposition to feel remorse is itself to be virtuous. So the flourishing and well-being of individuals is interrelated with and dependent upon the flourishing and well-being of the groups and societies of which they are a part. Suffering, I maintain, plays a vital role in enabling flourishing at all levels.
This emphasis on the role that suffering plays in the cultivation and expression of virtue, and hence in the promotion of well-being, is nevertheless compatible with our intuitions about the badness of suffering. Indeed, I want to respect the idea that suffering is very often meaningless and without redeeming features, that with cases of horrendous suffering this is always so, and that in such instances we should do all that we can to prevent or alleviate it.13 This is because the idea that suffering is necessary for virtue clearly doesn’t imply that suffering is sufficient. In many cases suffering can undermine or destroy the possibility of the development of virtue, and as a result can undermine or destroy the possibility of a happy life. Think, for instance, of a life of torture and solitary confinement, or of starvation and disease, or of overwhelming grief and tragedy, or of mental illness and degeneration, or of crippling poverty and oppressive institutional structures. Although there are better and worse ways to cope with all of these evils, such evils are very likely to hamper or defeat the possibility of human flourishing. For this and other reasons, the virtue-theoretical perspective to be developed here is perfectly supportive of the idea that these forms of suffering need to be alleviated, and the structures in which they exist radically altered. So it is no part of my remit in this book to argue that there is always an upside to suffering, or that it is usually all-things-considered valuable, or that there are good reasons for the amount and distribution of suffering in the world, or that when
13 The notion of ‘horrendous suffering’ is meant to mirror that of ‘horrendous evil’, a category introduced by Marilyn McCord Adams. Horrendous evils are such as to ‘rob a person’s life of positive meaning’. Some forms of suffering—indeed, some of those listed above—are like this. See Adams, M. M. (1990), ‘Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God’, in M. M. Adams and R. M. Adams, eds, The Problem of Evil, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 211. I’ll discuss Adams’s views in further detail in Chapter 5.
it comes to suffering this is the best of all possible worlds. The view that suffering is necessary for the existence of virtue is therefore consistent with the claim that suffering is in many circumstances terrible all-things-considered.
Still, with this significant caveat in mind, I come to praise suffering, not to bury it. I intend to highlight the many ways in which suffering has value, from a virtue-theoretical perspective, and thereby show the importance that suffering has for well-being in limited and non-ideal creatures like us. This will have theoretical implications—insofar as it runs counter to what many people think about suffering’s value—and practical implications too, suggesting that we should think more carefully about when and to what extent we should alleviate suffering, in our own person and in that of others. Perhaps our increasing pursuit of comfort, and the increasing medicalization of suffering, are things that we have good reason to reflect upon and in some cases resist, precisely because they undermine the possibility of cultivating virtues that are central to a flourishing life.14 In what follows I’ll briefly outline the structure of the book and the content of each chapter, before beginning to make my positive case.
Chapter 1: What Suffering Is
Before we discuss the value of suffering, we need to have some idea of what suffering is. In this chapter I argue in favour of a desire view of suffering, while in Chapter 2 I defend a parallel desire view of one of the central elements of suffering, namely the feeling of unpleasantness or negative affect. Taken together, the work in these chapters will constitute a fully developed picture of the nature of suffering. I begin by focusing on two central types of suffering: physical and mental. Physical suffering includes pain and other forms of physical discomfort, such as coldness, hunger, fatigue, and irritation. Mental suffering includes emotional suffering and other forms of mental discomfort, such as melancholy and depression. I discuss the nature of such forms of suffering, and consider what they might have in common. I conclude that all of these types constitute forms of suffering because they possess a negative affective component—they are unpleasant or feel bad, in other words. I then argue that negative affect is necessary, but not sufficient, for suffering: some other element is needed for experiences of negative affect to be experiences of suffering. After considering the claims of intensity and importance, I propose that suffering is negative affect that we mind, where minding is cashed out in terms of an occurrent desire that the negative affect not be occurring. I argue that this account has a number of things in its favour. First of all, it has suitably wide scope, allowing young children and certain animals to suffer. Second, it allows that suffering can be dependent both upon the intensity of affective experience, and also upon our thoughts and cognitions. Third, it enables us to capture the idea that suffering is, at least in some cases and to a limited extent, under our control. Finally—and
14 This is a view that has recently been expressed, from the standpoint of psychology and psychotherapy, by James Davies. See Davies, J. (2011), The Importance of Suffering, London: Routledge.
importantly—it accommodates a particular kind of dissociation between forms of unpleasantness and suffering. For it seems that sometimes we can suffer, and be motivated by our suffering, even when some experience is only mildly unpleasant. It would therefore seem that suffering must have a kind of motivational force that can be out of kilter with the intensity of the unpleasantness. This is best captured, so I’ll argue, if we think that suffering itself involves a motivational element like desire.
Chapter 2: The Nature of Unpleasantness
In this chapter I assess different substantive accounts of the core element of suffering, namely that property of experience we can identify with unpleasantness or negative affect. The central question in this chapter is: what is it for something to be unpleasant? Here I survey two broad approaches, which we can term internalist and externalist. On the former, unpleasantness is an internal or intrinsic property of experiences like pain, grief, hunger, and tiredness. On the latter, unpleasantness is grounded in a relation between sensations of pain et al. and some external attitude, such as an evaluation or imperative or desire. After assessing two main varieties of internalist accounts, and finding them wanting, I propose and defend a version of externalism which appeals to desire. On this desire view, unpleasantness consists of (i) a sensation and (ii) a desire that the sensation not be occurring. I propose that the desire view can capture the phenomenology of unpleasant experiences, and so does not suffer by comparison with internalist accounts on this score. Moreover, I argue that the desire view—or at least the new version of the desire view that I favour—has the means to avoid a number of traditional objections that are levelled at externalist approaches. Part of my argument here will be that the desire view can appeal to the account of suffering I developed in Chapter 1 to answer two of these objections. Indeed, as it turns out, the desire view of unpleasantness, allied in this way with the desire view of suffering from Chapter 1, provides the only really satisfactory account of dissociation cases discussed earlier. As a result, the account of suffering in Chapter 1 and the account of unpleasantness in Chapter 2 have the same basic attitudinal structure, and are mutually supporting.
Chapter 3: Suffering as a Virtuous Motive
In this chapter I develop my account of the first important way in which suffering has value from a virtue-theoretical perspective. I begin by motivating a virtue-theoretical approach to the question of the value of suffering. I propose that such an approach can capture the complexity of different values that suffering can have, and that it has historical and theological precedents. But the most important consideration in favour of this approach is that forms of suffering are, in the right circumstances, appropriate responses to important objects and events, where appropriateness is cashed out in terms of responses that enable us to best cope with those objects and events. And this, following Martha Nussbaum, is just what I take virtues to be: ways of responding appropriately
or excellently to what befalls us. Taken together, these reasons make a convincing case for examining the value of suffering in light of its contribution to virtue. I then argue for the radical claim that forms of physical and emotional suffering can themselves constitute virtuous motives. I make the case by focusing on two examples: physical pain and the negative emotion of remorse. I will show how these forms of suffering are, in the right conditions, effective and reliable motives in systems aiming at important goals: damage avoidance and repair in the case of pain, apologies and reparations in the case of remorse. In particular, I’ll claim that pain and remorse outperform feasible competitors when it comes to alerting us to the presence of the relevant disvalues, and motivating us to deal with them. As a result, I will claim that dispositions to suffer in these ways constitute virtues of the systems set up to govern such things.
In the second half of the chapter I consider and respond to two serious objections to this account. The first is that pain and negative emotion do not fit easily into a traditional picture of what virtues are. The second is that a view of suffering as a virtuous motive seems inconsistent with the common-sense view that virtuous motives are intrinsically valuable. With respect to the first objection, I will argue that whilst it is true that forms of physical and emotional suffering are not themselves traditionally identified as the motives of virtuous traits, they can nevertheless be plausibly regarded as the motivational elements in virtuous faculties. So there is no obvious reason why forms of suffering cannot constitute virtuous motives, if we adopt (as I argue we should) a broader understanding of what virtues can be. An important consequence of my argument in this chapter is, therefore, that it enables us to have a better understanding of what virtues are. With respect to the second objection, I develop Thomas Hurka’s view that virtuous motives are fitting or appropriate attitudes towards values or disvalues, where what makes some attitude fitting is that it is either a form of loving the good, or of hating the bad. I then maintain that forms of suffering can be regarded as ways in which we are pained by or hate disvalue: physical pain is a way in which we are pained by bodily damage and disorder, whilst remorse is a way in which we are pained by or hate our own wrongdoing. As a result, pain and remorse can be regarded as both intrinsically bad (as kinds of negative attitude) and nevertheless virtuous (as negative attitudes directed towards disvalue). I end the chapter by arguing that the goals that pain and remorse aim at and—when virtuous—reliably bring about, are central to human flourishing, such that we cannot envisage a good life without them. Not only are forms of suffering intrinsically valuable, therefore; they are also instrumentally vital in the provision of the goods that all human lives need.
Chapter 4: Suffering and Virtues of Strength and Vulnerability
The idea that forms of suffering can themselves constitute virtuous motives raises a number of important questions. One of the most pressing concerns the putative value
of forms of suffering that are not virtuous, but are instead recalcitrant, chronic, and disabling of proper function. In this chapter I argue that these kinds of suffering can have value from the virtue-theoretical perspective insofar as they are necessary for the development and expression of two important categories of virtue. The first is made up of virtues that constitute strength of character. To examine the role of suffering in promoting strength, I’ll look closely at the views of Friedrich Nietzsche, and show how they fit neatly within a virtue-theoretical account. I’ll explain how strength of character is essential for the attainment of important goals, such that without these virtues it is highly unlikely that we could live a happy life. I’ll then examine another way in which suffering is important for well-being, as a condition on the value of certain goals or ends. This is because facing up to and overcoming adversity enables one to communicate one’s strength of character to others, and for many people this is an important factor in maintaining or enhancing their self-worth and self-esteem, and therefore their sense of well-being. This makes it valuable for us to sometimes pursue activities that involve suffering, as Nietzsche thought.
In the second part of the chapter I will examine the importance of suffering in the cultivation of virtues associated with illness and disease—what we might term virtues of vulnerability. Here I will examine closely Havi Carel’s work on illness, coping, and adaptability, alongside Ian James Kidd’s work on associated virtues that illness can cultivate and express. Virtues associated with illness and malfunction are arguably necessary for us to be fully or completely virtuous, if we think that this involves dispositions to respond excellently to all aspects of a human life, and not just those parts of life in which one is healthy, independent, and self-sufficient. So virtues of strength are needed for us to flourish, insofar as we are creatures that strive and seek to accomplish things of value, while virtues of vulnerability are needed for us to respond appropriately, insofar as we are creatures that for much of our lives are weak and dependent. Without suffering, we would be unable to cultivate and express either category of virtue, and would be significantly worse off as a result.
Chapter 5: Suffering, Morality, and Wisdom
This chapter continues the story of how suffering, whether virtuous or non-virtuous, is essential to the cultivation of virtue. Here the focus will be on a range of virtues that are directed more towards the well-being of others than towards one’s own achievement or coping. In the first part of the chapter I make the case that suffering is vital for the existence and exercise of paradigm forms of the moral virtues: those dispositions to respond excellently in situations where our behaviour has an effect on the welfare of others. My starting point for the discussion here is the ‘virtue solution’ to the problem of evil, and the most famous version of this, John Hick’s ‘soul-making theodicy’. On this view, a world without suffering would be a world in which the very best aspects of our moral character would not develop, and so God has reason to create and allow a world in
which suffering exists. I survey a number of objections to Hick’s position, from feminist critics and other philosophers of religion, and then show how a more modest virtuetheoretical account, which reflects Buddhist thought and which emphasizes the importance of one’s own suffering in the development of moral virtue, is considerably more plausible. This general line on the moral value of suffering enjoys, moreover, considerable empirical support. I explain how research on moral development, and studies of psychopathy, suggest that experience of suffering is essential for the development of moral capacities, which are a precondition for developing moral virtue.
In the second half of the chapter I shift focus onto the virtue of wisdom, which is regarded as the highest and most important virtue. I highlight the paradigmatic components or elements of wisdom, and then show how suffering is necessary for the development of wisdom so understood. In particular, I argue that suffering is necessary for us to have the kind of evaluative understanding that is at the heart of wisdom, and that reflectiveness on experiences of suffering is positively correlated with and a determinant of wisdom.
In closing I address the worry that a virtue-theoretical perspective, indeed any positive account of the value of suffering, might itself be morally suspect. I argue that although this kind of criticism is apt when raised against some of the ways in which a positive case for the value of suffering might be made, my virtue-theoretical approach is not subject to this kind of objection. Indeed, my approach will provide support for some of the things that critics of the positive thinking movement have to say.
Chapter 6: Suffering, Communication, and Social Virtue
The earlier chapters make the case that suffering is essential for the development and expression of individual virtues. In the final chapter I argue for the importance of suffering from a social rather than individual perspective, and focus on three ways in which suffering facilitates social goods and virtues. Suffering, I maintain, is essential for (i) justice, (ii) loving relationships, and (iii) faith and trust. At the heart of each story is an account of suffering’s communicative role and value.
In each case I begin by examining religious teachings on the importance of suffering. Thus I’ll focus on the Biblical and Qur’anic ideas that suffering is just punishment for sin, that through suffering it is possible to atone for sin and to express love for others, and that suffering is important as a test of faith. But in each case I’ll argue that religious teaching has obvious secular counterparts, and that these forms of suffering will be a feature of properly functioning relationships and social groups in secular spheres. To this end I maintain that suffering is essential for appropriate judicial punishment, that through suffering we express our loving concern for friends and partners, and that suffering is vital in communicating faith and ensuring trust in social groups of many different kinds. As a result, the investigation into the social value of suffering via
religious tradition is merely illustrative of what I regard as a larger truth about the vital role that suffering plays at the collective level.
* * *
In this introduction I have merely presented a sketch of my account, and one that I hope to fill in over the next six chapters. There are, of course, many other issues related to suffering and its value that I am unable to discuss here, for reasons of space, time, and ability. But if what I do say ends up being a starting point for further discussion of a central, important, and neglected area of human experience, I’ll consider that achievement enough.
1 What Suffering Is
In one sense we all know what suffering is: it is the state of being in pain, misery, distress, unhappiness. And we all know this because we have all, to a greater or lesser extent, experienced such things. This highlights the first point I wish to make about how suffering is to be understood in this book, namely: as an aspect of our experience. It is good to get clear at the beginning about this point, since there are other familiar but non-experiential uses of ‘suffer’ and ‘suffering’. For instance, we might talk of a person suffering a loss of memory, or a football team suffering a defeat, or a community suffering deprivation as a result of government cuts, and mean by this just that something bad has happened to the person, team, or community. This is a non-experiential sense of suffering, since that which the person, team, or community suffers isn’t itself a negative experience—although of course it can be related to experience, when the person bemoans their failing memory, the team are upset by the defeat, and members of the community despair as a result of the cuts. By the same token, something might suffer in the non-experiential sense when it deteriorates or undergoes some negative change: relationships, buildings, air quality, job prospects, good looks, and the like can all suffer in this way.
It is because I wish to focus on suffering as experienced by a subject that my account differs from that given by other philosophers. Eleonore Stump, for instance, proposes an account of suffering in a non-experiential sense. She writes: ‘Even if a malefactor feels no pain over the moral evil he does, his life suffers because of it.’1
Someone suffers in Stump’s sense if some evil befalls them—or in the case of the malefactor, they bring some evil upon themselves—and evils need not be experienced. For this reason, she proposes that to suffer isn’t simply to be in pain, noting that ‘we say that death is one of the evils human beings suffer, and we do not mean by this claim to be commenting only on those instances of death that are painful for the people who die’.2 There is a great deal to admire in Stump’s account, and I don’t intend
1 Stump, E. (2010), Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 4.
2 Stump (2010), p. 5. See van Hooft, S. (1998), ‘Suffering and the Goals of Medicine’, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 1: 125–31, for a similar kind of account. He writes: ‘people who are experiencing health threatening conditions such as lack of education, poverty, unhygienic living conditions, addictions of various kinds, poor diet, dangerous working conditions, and so forth, are actually suffering even though they may not be aware of it or feel their lives or integrity threatened’, p. 130.
to argue that suffering properly so-called is an experiential concept, or that to use the term to refer to evil that befalls someone or something is to use it loosely. Nor do I wish to argue that suffering, even as an experiential state, is identical with or confined to cases of being in physical pain. Nevertheless, suffering is most naturally used to refer to a negative experiential state, and I take it that the standard evaluative claims about suffering—that it should be alleviated, that it is something in virtue of which one is pitied, that it is incompatible with happiness and well-being—also refer to suffering as experienced. Perhaps most importantly, if claims about the value of suffering are to be plausible at all, I take it that they are most plausible when they refer to suffering as an experiential state; and it is the value of suffering that I’m concerned with in this book. For these reasons, I’ll restrict my focus to suffering in the narrower sense. If I can do something to clarify this concept, and make the case that suffering as a negative experiential state has value in a number of important ways, then I will be more than satisfied, even if the positive case I make on behalf of suffering in this sense does not extend to suffering understood more broadly.
I began by saying that in one sense we know what suffering is. But in another sense we don’t know much about what suffering is at all, because we don’t know what it is that makes some experiential state a form of suffering. In order to know that, we would need to know what all of the different kinds of suffering have in common, in virtue of which they count as kinds of suffering. These will be the defining features of a state of suffering as such. And although many people in many different fields—academic and otherwise—have interesting and plausible things to say about different kinds of suffering, and in particular pain, there has been little philosophical work addressing the general question. In this chapter and the next I want to make good on this lack and identify what I take to be the defining features of suffering, with a view to getting clearer as to the nature of this central aspect of human life.
1 Kinds of Suffering
Although this will be somewhat artificial, it will be helpful at the beginning to divide suffering into two basic kinds: physical and mental. These categories are fluid, however, and so this initially rather basic classificatory scheme will become more detailed and hopefully more accurate as we progress.
1.1
Physical suffering
Perhaps the most obvious case of suffering is provided by states of physical pain. Now as I’ll explain later, not all cases of physical pain constitute instances of suffering, and so we should be wary of simply identifying cases of pain with cases of physical suffering. Being in pain, we might say, isn’t sufficient for us to suffer. And something similar can be said about the other kinds of negative experiential states I’ll discuss in this section. But for ease of expression I’ll talk loosely of pain and these other states being kinds or instances of suffering, and later in the chapter specify what other conditions need to be
met in order for us to suffer in an experiential sense. With this in mind, let us say a little about what pain is, before turning our attention to other forms of physical suffering.
Pain is ubiquitous and varied: all normal humans experience pain, as do many nonhuman animals, and there are many different kinds and dimensions of pain. There are, for instance, pains associated with different parts of the body: there are pains in the neck, literally as well as metaphorically; we suffer back pain, earaches, chest pains, headaches, and so on. Pains can have different timescales: some are acute and temporary, whilst others—often the most worrying and problematic class—are chronic and long-lasting. There are different causes of pain: nerve damage, broken bones, dental work, childbirth, burns, swollen glands, surgery, arthritis. There are pains associated with diseases and conditions, such as cancer or fibromyalgia. There are pains of different intensity and modes, captured by different adjectives: pains can be agonizing, burning, dull, gnawing, raw, sore, sharp, severe, tender, jarring.
But pain doesn’t exhaust the category of physical suffering, since there are many ways in which we can suffer physically without being in pain. Other forms of physical suffering are grounded in states such as tiredness, coldness, heat, nausea, hunger, thirst, dizziness, bodily irritation, or itchiness.3 Although these can be extremely unpleasant, and some, such as hunger and thirst, are amongst the greatest forms of suffering that we seek to alleviate, we misspeak if we call these forms of pain. Fatigue and irritation can feel extremely bad, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to call them kinds of pain: they don’t hurt, we might say. And there are other differences between these states and pain: with fatigue, coldness, hunger, and thirst, there is less in the way of in-class variation—in other words, there are fewer ways of feeling cold or tired or hungry than there are of feeling physical pain. And there are, correspondingly, fewer causes of these negative states. Feelings of hunger are usually caused when blood sugar levels or stores of fat fall below optimal levels, whilst tiredness and fatigue are typically caused by lack of sleep or significant physical exercise, and these things alone.
However, although there is much less variation in the kinds and causes of these forms of physical suffering, it still makes sense to regard these as forms of physical suffering, and for a number of reasons. The first is that pain and other forms of physical suffering—in particular extremes of heat and coldness—would seem to result from the operation of different modalities of a part of the sensory system, namely the somatosensory system. This is a complex system responsible for giving us different kinds of information about the state of ourselves and the state of the external world via certain forms of conscious experience, including sensations of touch, pain, temperature, and movement. Generation of pain and temperature sensations often involves the activation of the same kinds of sensory transducers, namely nociceptors, which are responsive to stimuli indicating bodily threat and temperature changes. By the same token, sensations related to itch and other forms of irritation are generated via activation of the
3 Recall the caveat above: hunger, tiredness et al. might sometimes not be sufficient to be forms of physical suffering.
same somatosensory pathway—the paleospinothalamic—as sensations of dull pains and hot temperatures. So similarity in the mechanisms generating the forms of suffering provide some neuroscientific evidence that pain and other forms of suffering are of the same general physical kind.
A second reason is that pain and other forms of negative physical states can operate without much in the way of cognitive mediation: animals and young children, who are incapable of sophisticated cognitive activity, can nevertheless experience pain, coldness, fatigue, nausea, irritation, and the like.
But perhaps the main unifying feature is that all of these states seem to be about the body in an important way: pain is felt as bodily pain, our bodies feel cold, our skin feels irritable, our stomach aches from hunger, our throats are parched with thirst. The intentional object of the experience—or what the experience is about— seems to be some part or element of the physical body. Given this, it is not implausible to regard these forms of suffering as essentially physical, and hence as kinds of physical suffering.4
1.2 Mental suffering
Perhaps the most obvious case of mental suffering is provided by states of emotional suffering. This consists of a class of negative emotional states: they include, to quote David Hume, ‘remorse, shame, anguish, rage, disappointment, anxiety, fear, dejection, despair’.5 As with physical suffering, there are a wide variety of states which ground emotional suffering. Some are directed at the self—guilt and shame are prime examples— while others are more outward-looking—such as grief at the death of a loved one—and some look in both directions: disappointment can be both self- and other-directed. Negative emotions can also have different timescales—disappointment is typically short-lived, whilst grief and despair are longer-lasting. Related to this is the fact that negative emotions differ in intensity—despair is more intense than disappointment, fear more intense than anxiety—and in value, with shame generally thought to be worse than embarrassment.6
4 Since we can also feel mental tiredness and exhaustion, then strictly speaking this claim should be understood as referring to pain, coldness, hunger, thirst, and bodily tiredness and fatigue. Thanks to Christian Miller for pointing this out.
5 Hume, D. (1779), Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 10, p. 42 in the version by Jonathan Bennett presented at http://www.earlymoderntexts.com. See also John Hick: ‘But the greater part of human misery transcends physical pain. What makes illness, for example, an experience of suffering is very often not pain as such but other elements in the situation: fear of permanent disability or of death; anxiety about one’s family, or finances, or career; the frustration of one’s plans; or the humiliation of helplessness and of dependence upon others. And what often renders miserable the hard experience of the peasant scratching out a bare subsistence from the soil must be a constant nagging anxiety about the future, with its everimpending threat of starvation.’ Hick, J. (1977), Evil and the God of Love, 2nd edition, London: Macmillan Press, p. 320.
6 Once more, and as we’ll see later in the chapter, not all instances of negative emotional experience constitute forms of suffering.
But emotional suffering doesn’t exhaust the category of mental suffering, since there are many ways in which we suffer mentally, but without being in a state that is standardly taken to be an emotion. These include states such as frustration, depression, loss of a sense of self, spiritual pain, loneliness, stress, anxiety, social rejection, lovesickness, boredom, homesickness, an experience of a lack of meaning. Although some of these are emotion-like—for instance, anxiety seems akin to fear—we might think that there are nevertheless differences. Forms of mental but non-emotional suffering seem to have a broader target or object, such as the person’s whole life in the case of the loss of a sense of self or depression, or indeed no target at all, in the case of some forms of anxiety. Moreover, unlike standard emotions, these negative mental states seem to lack a clear ‘motivational’ or ‘actional’ element. Loneliness, boredom, and spiritual pain are typically characterized by lack of motivation, and in this way they seem rather different from negative emotions like fear and guilt.
Despite these differences, it still makes sense to regard these emotional and nonemotional states as equally forms of mental suffering, and to distinguish them from forms of physical suffering—although this kind of distinction remains somewhat artificial and the lines between the kinds blurred. One reason for this is that negative emotions like grief, and non-emotional forms of suffering like lovesickness or spiritual pain, seem to be much more closely tied up with the subject’s other mental states, and indeed their mental life as a whole, rather than the subject’s physical body and its condition. Grief, disappointment, guilt, shame, loneliness, social rejection, would all—to a greater or lesser extent—seem to involve and indeed be a response to a subject’s thoughts about the world and their place in it. For instance, disappointment would seem to involve a subject thinking that something they had wanted and expected has not come about, whilst guilt seems generated by a subject’s thinking that they have done something wrong. By the same token, loneliness is bound up with a subject’s thinking that she lacks close friends and companionship, spiritual pain a response to the realization that one has lost one’s faith. Physical pain seems much less bound up with thinking and other mental states, however. Some evidence for this is provided by the fact that forms of mental suffering are much more dependent upon and responsive to thinking, and changes in thinking, than forms of physical suffering. My guilt typically goes away if I realize that I didn’t do something wrong, and my lovesickness disappears if I come to believe that she really does love me. But realizing that my body isn’t damaged or that I’ve eaten enough food to sustain blood sugar levels typically won’t have any effect on my pain and hunger. The latter are forms of suffering that seem to operate, to a large degree, beyond the realm of thought or outside of what Wilfred Sellars called the ‘space of reasons’.7
7 Sellars, W. (1956), ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’, in Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven, eds, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 1, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, §36.
