CFP: Special Issue of The Journal of Ethics: "Suffering and Attention"

Call for Papers for special issue on “Suffering and Attention”

The Journal of Ethics

Editors Silvia Caprioglio Panizza and Eva-Maria Düringer

(University of Tübingen)

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.

The Journal of Ethics would like to devote a Special Issue to questions about the nature and ethics of suffering. We aim to put in conversation contemporary analytic philosophical approaches with historical and continental views, and 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. Submissions may focus on analytic and continental, Western and non-Western treatments of the nature of, and ethical responses to, suffering.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

The nature of suffering (ontology, phenomenology, experiential vs. non-experiential accounts)

Non-Western accounts of suffering

Suffering in non-human animals

Suffering in medical (including psychiatric and mental health) ethics

Suffering and varieties of moral responsibility

The role of attention in suffering

The ethics of (in)attention to the suffering of others and oneself

Acceptance vs. exertion as a response to suffering

Suffering and virtue

Silva Caprioglio Panizza is researcher on the DFG project ‘Natural Badness’ at the University of Tübingen, and Honorary senior researcher at University College Dublin. She is the author of The Ethics of Attention and co-editor of The Murdochian Mind (both Routledge 2022). Her work focuses on moral psychology, meta-ethics, and applied ethics.

Eva-Maria Düringer is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Tübingen. She has published various articles on the philosophy of emotions, virtue and suffering and is PI of the DFG project ‘Natural Badness: Suffering and its Place in Contemporary Virtue Ethics’.

Submission instruction.

Authors must submit their manuscript through The Journal of Ethics EM manager. All submissions will go through the standard The Journal of Ethics review procedure (publication only on the basis of an editorial decision based on at least two double blind reviews). The deadline for submission is 1st of August 2025 . The expected publication date of the SI is spring 2026.

All manuscripts should be prepared according to the journal’s guidelines provided on The Journal of Ethics website. The Special Issue will follow all Springer Journal Policies, including Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance and peer review selection policy. This journal offers the option to publish Open Access. You are allowed to publish open access through Open Choice. Please explore the OA options available through your institution by referring to our list of OA Transformative Agreements.