From William Hubben’s, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Kafka:
The thinking of all four occupied itself with suffering. Kierkegaard regarded it as the beginning of all spiritual insight; Dostoevsky saw it as the key to understanding others; Nietzsche felt it was an obstacle to be overcome; only Kafka let it be a cruel and senseless fact.
It’s not a question of whether Hubben’s gets this right of course. There is no one way – no right way – in which to “get it”. As with most other things this complex and personal our reactions to suffering will be reflective of the actual life we have lived and the manner in which we have come to understand it.
Still, to the extent Hubben is right about Kafka, I’ll pick this one. I believe that, philosophically, you reach a point in life – if you have lived your own to the fullest – where you come to appreciate that suffering is basically beyond good and evil, beyond really knowing at all.
And whatever you think you do know about it you take with you to the grave.
Should we be talking about the philosophy of suffering, then? That is your title, are you interested in dissecting the experience and the fact of suffering in depth?
Let’s start with a relatively simple inquiry: what is suffering?
Hubben’s point is this: men and women struggle to frame human suffering in such a way they can make sense of it.
But what if any sense that can be made of it is merely an existential narrative that, eventually, tumbles over into the abyss along with the narrator?
That seems to be Kafka’s reaction to it. Mine too.
What is suffering? Suffering is pain. But what brings some pain, brings others pleasure. And, as with most things, it is rooted inextricably and ineffably in a labyrinthian intertwining of nature and nurture.
But what is “pain”? An adversive reaction, a fleeing-from based on intense sensory impulses. Pain represents “too much energy” (either too great or too little a quantity) relative to the domain of potentially healthy experiential quantity/form of energy of the organic system in question. When a breach of organic integrity occurs so is pain experienced, what we experience as this momentary destruction of the healthy equilibrium of the body’s systems. Total rupture is death. Partial rupture is pain.
This interaction sublimated to the level of perceptive-imaginative consciousness is suffering: pleasure → happiness, pain → sadness/suffering, from body to mind this relation passes (as above,so below…). We might look at it as a simple cause-effect reaction produced through selection over time by the environmental necessity for organisms to seek what benefits them and flee from what does not benefit them. But this system is far more complex than that, even if it first evolved in such a simple manner. The broadest suffering would then be that suffering born most from the widest possible scope of conscious experiencing, rising up from within dasein itself, and as such becomes a dominant mode of existing-as and relating-to for dasein.
Saying that suffering is senseless and that we can make no meaning of it is, I think, premature. Suffering is inevitable in the sense that to live is to suffer, on many levels, and to eventually suffer that highest form of organic rupture, death; but while we are alive now, suffering can be something we learn to use. Where we suffer, there too lies dormant some truth of our being, even if this truth is a contrived fabrication that we might seek to build upon and pass over (as with Nietzsche), or a truth that we might seek through working to transcend the happiness-suffering dynamic itself (as with Buddhism). Suffering isn’t good or bad, it just is, but suffering is in part what, for us, creates the impressions of good and bad (our suffering and happiness leads to the creation and use of values, the assignment of meaning). Once we face suffering more directly with strength to withstand it and intent to lift its veil, we can learn a lot about ourselves. This also leads to increased capacity to resist various sufferings, which leads to our ability to experience increase in quantity and quality of happiness.
Still, asking a question like this takes us into a murky muddle of intersections where the subjective and the objective coalesce and collide in ways no one really grasps fully. We invented the word to convey both physical and emotional [psychological] states we all have experiences regarding. But it’s not something we can chart and graph like the tides or chemical interactions or weather patterns.
Which means it both can and cannot be communicated to others depending on the context in which someone feels pain and their frame of mind at the time.
And then when we go to deeper levels still, trying to grasp what pain “ultimately” means, most choose God as ontological rim and the teleological hub on the wheel of life.
I choose nothing at all. For each of us it comes from nothing and it returns to nothing. Without “I” there is only a bottomless pit of nada.
After all, it’s not like we can query Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and Kafka now about the meaning of human suffering.
We need to make sense of suffering “in the moment” because one way or another we have to deal with it. Or choose to stop dealing with it altogether and just snuff it.
Instead, it’s when you are lying in bed at 2 o’clock in the morning and start thinking about what things mean “overall” that you either stick to your own narrative or convince yourself there is a way that everyone ought to think about it. And not just suffering, of course.
And yet there are any number of folks who simply refuse to accept this. There has to be something more than nothing in the end and somehow they manage to hammer suffering into this Big Picture. I once did this myself and now there are lots and lots of times I wish I could figure out how to do it again.
True, but, for many, it’s only a matter of time before the suffering builds to the point where such thinking is accepted as utterly inconsequential. We all have a breaking point when it comes to pain and suffering.
It is as though the pain is saying, “resistence is futile”.
Re: the OP. This is where perspectivism comes in handy. Suffering is all those things and more. There is no one context in which to view suffering, unless you wish to limit yourself, or unless you are somehow limited without trying to be.
The difference between perspectivism and nihilism is that nihilism only goes half way. It’s the destruction of values. Perspectivism uses nihilism as a tool. The perspectivist is wiling to invent values. And not only to invent them, but to see them as tools as well. Values, to a perspectivist, are tools used to affirm life, to affirm power. There is power in all these views - it’s the power that counts, and not the specific values, in the end.
Humans require narrative, and would have to form a narrative even if they knew beyond doubt what the truth is. That we use narratives doesn’t mean we cannot know the truth - we cannot know the truth, of course - but it’s not narrative that prevents us.
For the past couple years I have been playing around with a philosophy, or philosophies, which take novelty into regard. Before McKenna I hadn’t really seen the term used philosophically, and while his particular theory may not be the most suitable for academia, I think it can be refined, and injected.
For example the repetition of pleasure… becomes suffering. The repetition of suffering… becomes a (weird) pleasure. Vice versa for others. Sadist/Masochist. The ratio in which we move back and forth between these two areas of relative novelty, for McKenna is… derivated from the I-Ching in the rainforest while on shroom, but like I said… this does seem to happen. Sometimes the turn is on a dime. Even the things we feel we would never tire of, or want to happen twice, when they do continue, there is always a counterbalance.
Does that seem like a universal truth to anyone else? To me all philosophy revolves around the function of novelty—not just within human minds, but cosmic systems of which we are apart.
Yes, this immense depth and murkiness of experience and feeling is so beautiful, so uniquely human. Within this vastness and unknowability man is given the divine opportunity to create himself, to grow and change, to become more. If life were static and predictable and obvious, this would not be possible.
Yes, most people use some sort of image to ground their attempt at understanding the experience. This is also wonderfully human, the necessity for the invention of beautiful lies.
This fact does not refute the need for the invention of human meaning, however. You do it too, it is not a choice we make, it is what we are.
We can query them now. Just read their writings.
Dealing with suffering isn’t a chioce; we have some choice over how we deal with it, but not the fact that it must be dealt with somehow.
Or you just remain passively open to the unknowability of it all, learning to appreciate and savor the lack of certainty.
What’s wrong with fitting suffering into the Big Picture? People do this because it makes life easier for themselves, its their simple way of creating meaning, of self-valuing. Our method of creating is more powerful than theirs, but ultimately its all the same method.
This is true if perhaps we are being tortured to death, literally. Other than these extremes, however, suffering is manageable for most people. The level of suffering creates the level and power of the tools needed for mitigating that suffering. “The harder the wind blows the taller I am”…
Is your life really so extremely painful that “resistance is futile”? If so, you have my sympathies.
Why perspectivist wants (or needs?) to invent values?
Is the narrative (required by human, according to you) persistent/permanent one?
I tend to think we don’t have to have one narrative to stick with.
I don’t think we need to “invent” values.
We can simply choose (logically/rationally or adopt intuitively/instinctively/irrationally) one or more perspective/narrative as we go, as needed/wanted.
And we can have multiple perspectives/narratives to evaluate and see the same thing/situation, too.
This is majorly caricaturish. To the point of ridiculousness. You don’t simply change your perspective like you change your underwear…once a week or so. Perspectives aren’t like opinions in a teenage girl. A perspective shift is more like a paradigm shift. Square earth to round. Center to nowhere. Which is also to say, it’s not your choice. (If we’re talking about Nietzsche—which I doubt).
Not for me.
(I already have silly preferences and beliefs if it’s for choosing/deciding things, for example)
What’s the use of value for you?
If you can specify the details of perspective in which you see “humans require (persistent/permanent) narratives (judging by history)”, maybe I can come up with evidence or explanation to the contrary.
If there is no need for “values”, no one need to invent it.
Well, I got the feeling that you are into persistent/permanent type of perspectives/narratives rather than using one (or more) as we go.
Same with values.
I do have preferred sets of perspectives, for examples, and use them often.
But they are not persisting nor permanent, as my preferences change and my preferences for each subject matter vary depending on many factors.
Also, the preferences of sensory processing layer, emotional layer, mental layer can be all different, and combined preferences vary depending on priority and other parameters.
So, in my case, it’s not really practical to “invent” permanent/persistent value and/or narratives/perspectives.
There can be many perspectives within a paradigm. You seem caught i this idea that every view is mutually exclusive of other views. That’s the antithesis of perspectivism.
Let’s see - I think taking a bullet in the brain is bad, and avoiding it is good. That’s useful in avoiding death. Oh - so I guess I value my life.
I can specify that all of recorded history is a narrative, and there’s a lot of that. This is just common sense. I really don’t think I need to explain this.
Are you prepared to decide for everyone? I see a lot of people who seem to need values.
To you, “perspectivism” means no more than, “there are lots of neat ways of looking at things”…
Caricaturish.
Slave morality is a perspective taken. It is mutually exclusive of other views, for instance, Master morality. Perspectives are rooted in your constitution—i.e., your biology, your genes, your breeding—which you are not “free” to change. You are not free to change them, any more than a horse is free to grow a longer neck, and become a giraffe. If this wasn’t the case, then we wouldn’t have to be “bridges to the overman”—we’d just willy-nilly change our perspective!
There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing. I like Aladdin too. And Nietzsche doesn’t want exactly want followers. Just realize, that you’re now departing…
Because it’s absolutely clear, from the texts, that perspectives are rooted in biology, genes, and breeding—for Nietzsche. That’s why the imperative is, “Become who you are” —and not “change who you are”. It’s not a hard one to follow, either.
Dude, I’m dying to understand the Aladdin quip. I fucking love Aladdin.
Unless you yourself are caricaturing Faust’s position, I’d have to say I follow you better than Faust because I agree with what you’re saying about perspectivism (based on what I’ve read of N.).
Just a note, fuse. While Nietzsche is the godfather of perspectivism, the ism itself should not be confused with Nietzsche’s sole view per se. Descartes was a subjectivist, but to an extent, most philosophers since him have been subjecticvists. But this includes many varied views. The same can be said of social contractarians. They come in different breeds. This can be said of most isms. Certainly of empiricists, rationalists and existentialists. It’s taxonomy - a convenience.
While there are those who evidently think that all you need to do is to google up a wiki article to know what a subjectivist will say, it’s not really true, at least in my experience with wikipedia.
One thing that may be necessary to be a perspectivist, however, is to see everything as a process. Even people. And process assumes change. To me, changing paradigms is a matter more of adjusting focus than of looking in a different direction. The Christian and the atheist both require a narrative based on psychological truths, to someone of my ilk. It’s the truths one chooses that make the difference.
Most of the time, even two “opposing” paradigms share more than they differ on. The perspectivist does not view the world in terms of paired opposites, irreconcilable dichotomies and mutually exclusive views.
