Suffering and Attention

Suffering and Attention

Tübingen, 16-17 April 2025

Organised by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza and Eva-Maria Düringer

Suffering has always been topical. Where there is life, there is the capacity to suffer. But what precisely is suffering? It is more than pain, and it is more than things going badly. But what? And what, if anything, should we do about it? 

The nature of suffering has recently become a topic of lively debate in analytic philosophy. In Suffering and Virtue (2018), Micheal Brady thinks of suffering as ‘displeasures that we mind’, while the volume The Philosophy of Suffering (2020), co-edited by Brady, David Bain and Jennifer Corns, collects a wide array of different views: suffering is conceived e.g. as negatively construing one’s situation, as a severe mental disruption, or as an emotion directed at pain. Different as these views are, they all agree that suffering is essentially experiential. But not even this seems to be a given. Corns (2022) has recently argued that suffering is significantly disrupted agency, hence not essentially marked by any experience at all – a view shared by some virtue ethical stances on suffering who take suffering to consist in prevention of flourishing, experienced or not. 

The account of suffering we accept has a bearing on the way we will answer the ethical questions that suffering gives rise to: How do we engage with suffering, in ourselves and others? Do we have a duty always to alleviate or minimise it? Should we ever welcome it? Is it acceptable to look away, or do we have a responsibility to pay attention to it? And how do we attend to it without being crushed? 

Interestingly, suffering is not thought of as only negative. Brady (2018) suggests that some forms of suffering, e.g. remorse, are virtuous reactions to wrong-doing and therefore praiseworthy. In The Philosophy of Suffering (2020) we find descriptions of suffering as an appropriate reaction to pain or a process to regain mental equilibrium. Twentieth century philosopher and mystic Simone Weil goes even one step further and sees suffering as an experience which, if met with love and attention, enables transformation and insight into the nature of reality and of oneself.

And yet, it is generally agreed that suffering is something negative: displeasure, pain, mental and agential disruption can be very hard to cope with and possess a destructive potential. Weil describes in disconcerting words the way in which suffering crushes the soul and makes us social outcasts, and how nearly psychologically impossible it is to attend to a sufferer. 

But perhaps suffering is neither something to be embraced, nor something to be dealt with, but rather something to be dispelled. Suffering was the reason Siddhartha Gautama, according to tradition, started his wanderings and arrived at the main ideas of what is now known as Buddhism. In Buddhist philosophy, suffering arises from ignorance about our existence. Ideally, removing this ignorance will mean the end of suffering.

At this workshop, we will raise questions about the nature and ethics of suffering by putting in conversation contemporary analytic approaches with historical and continental views, and by broadening the scope to include reflections on the suffering of both human and non-human animals, environmental perspectives, and questions of suffering in the philosophy of medicine and mental health.