Abstract

Phenomenology has attended often to the theme of pain, but less to suffering. Careful study of the latter leads to results that correspond with observations appearing in the philosophy of medicine and in literature. The difference between pain and suffering exposes the fact that in some instances the latter defies conceptions of subjectivity widely accepted in phenomenology. The subject who suffers is a subject who struggles to give meaning to his or her experience, and in some instances loses the capacity entirely. A phenomenological account of these possibilities sharpens the challenge brought to the theology that, under the heading of theodicy, defends the unitary meaning of all experience. The theology that abandons theodicy may thereby recover a strong sense of its own biblical roots, which nurture a love of the God-man who suffers out of love for us.