Pain and its meaning
04
Mar
In his book “Palliative Society: Pain Today”,
Byung-Chul Han characterizes the being who has “objectified pain” as one who lives in a “purely bodily affliction”, because being “endowed with meaning [Sinnhaftigkeit] pain presupposes a narrative that inserts life into a horizon of meaning”, so without a bodily life linked to a greater meaning it is “a bare life emptied of meaning, which no longer narrates” (Han, 2021, p. 46).
He quotes Walter Benjamin, in Images of Thought, where he shows the healing power of narration: “The child is sick. The mother brings her to bed and sits down beside her. And then she begins to tell stories” (p. 47), at least that’s what used to be done in the old days, before taking the child to the doctor.
As we quoted in last month’s blog: “today we live in a post-narrative time” (p. 48), “the hypersensitive human being of late modernity, who suffers senseless pain … that wave of pain in which the spirit recognizes its impotence sinks rapidly today” (p. 49).
He also quotes E. Jünger’s “On Pain”: “The human being deludes himself that he is safe, while it is only a matter of time before he is dragged into the abyss by the elements” (p. 55).
Jünger explains that pain cannot be made to disappear, he speaks of an “economy of pain, if placed in the background in this way, it appears hidden in an ‘invisible capital’, which ‘increases with interest and interest on interest’. Paraphrasing Hegel’s “cunning of reason”, Jünger postulates the “cunning of pain”, in this way, it is not autocratic power, but pain that has not been objectified in some form of domination.
He writes, quoting Jünger: “No claim is more certain than that which pain has on life. Where pain is spared, equilibrium is restored according to the laws of an entirely determined economy” (pp. 55-56).
Thus it is possible to speak, according to the author, “borrowing a well-known expression, of a ‘cunning of pain’, which achieves its goal by all means” (p. 56), “… the scattered light with which pain, in return, begins to fill the space” (idem), only if this light is outside our objectified “security” (that linked to material goods and comforts) can we find another, more lasting type of ‘conquests’, which are not objectifiable.
The author goes on to explain that “in a palliative society hostile to pain, silent pains multiply, crowded into the margins, persisting in an absence of meaning, speech and image” (p. 57).
Far from narcissism and selfishness, we find a meaning to pain, we find more than a meaning, a reward that comes from our solidarity, from the encounter with the Other and with the true happiness of life in the family, in the community and in true security.
Han, B. C. (2021) Paliative Society: pain today. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
