Love and beyond pain
09
Aug
Pain is not the resignation of absolute
interiority: “the subject who works on identity, returning to himself in his interiority, assimilating the world, is incapable of pain” (pg. 329), while other thinkers stopped in anguish or in the search through difference or even through the subject destined for an “absolute spirit”, Heidegger sees in pain a “fundamental affective tone of melancholy” (Han, 2023, pg. 329), it is the tone of being… of finitude… of finite thought, “is the identical feature that, as the basis of a certain formal manner, supports every fundamental tonality occupied by some content, the main feature that, as the same, is the basis of the respective tuning mode” (Han, 2023, pg. 330).
There is no reason for pain other than a separation from something that transcends it, says a Brazilian song “those who did not suffer for love, did not love”, but this relationship can be reversed if we can see the divine as Pure Love, He also through pain loves us out of love, perhaps it is its ultimate essence, like the Christian symbol of the cross.
All philosophy tells us about being separated from something, a search for something, the desire for infinity and agape happiness (those that are not lasting are only palliative), thus the name of Han’s book “The palliative society”, speaks of pain today.
There is an attraction in this type of essence, the relationship between pain and love, not because of a suffering or masochistic spirit, but precisely because of the separation of infinity, plenitude and pure Being, and only the existence of Pure Being can attract us to this kind of love.
A striking quote from Han is: “The modern loss of faith, which concerns not only God and the afterlife, but reality itself, makes human life radically transitory.”, the Korean-German philosopher is much closer of Buddhism than of Christianity, but understands an essential relationship that exists in this Love/Pain, in this Being/Non-Being, not in a dualistic way, but in an intimate relationship like true Love.
So if there is a precedence in the relationship, it is Pain and Love, but not as a denial of life but as its maximum affirmation.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger. Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
