The pain of existing: Buytendijk and Merleau-Ponty thinking of human suffering

Abstract

Our aim is to analyze pain as an experience of existing, according to the philosophical reflections of Buytendijk and Merleau-Ponty. To support our analysis, we use as a basis the text De la Douleur by Buytendijk and Phénoménolgie de la Percepcion by Merleau-Ponty. The focus is to show how these two philosophers consider pain, from the phenomenological perspective, as an expression of the human condition of existing in permanent suffering. We are marked by the tragic fate of suffering with a radical impossibility to escape from pain. The body itself, which experiences the unique pain of existing, reveals a kind of constitutive pain as the founding malaise of humanity. We conclude by showing that suffering, which cannot be eliminated, demands from humans the work of love in which we are called to care for one another. In this way, love is the sign of hope that makes it possible to connect with one another and have compassion for their pain.