Pain as negativity and positivity

Heidegger's Aesthetics & The aesthetic judgement of pain

Glenda Jensen

There are two ways to deal with suffering and to distance

oneself from it. One is the scientific form and the other is the
metaphysical form. The scientific attitude tends to control the
causes and effects of a particular body, to describe the form
and under which symptoms it manifests and then to develop
methods to eradicate that pain or to suffer.
The metaphysical attitude, one would ask for what were the
conditions of possibility of that evil, beyond its location in a
determined time and space, in a culture or in a concrete time.
Rather one would ask about the ontological constitution of the
a priori world so that this manifestation of pain is possible.
One of the major functions of the great religions, is to
provide a doctrine on the meaning of pain as the basis of a
teaching. A kind of invitation and education to endure the
suffering and ailments in this life. The question that lies
behind is how we should behave facing the pain. Every
technique that struggles against suffering finds its origins and
foundations in religious or metaphysical explanations. Both
rely on the endless task of interpreting pain. In Martin
Heidegger's words this union would be an expression of the
dominance exerted by a technical interpretation of thinking
that goes back to the fifth century BC. The history of
metaphysics is about the development of techniques and
thoughts that have tried in large part to decipher the meaning
of the pain. Under the consummation of this doctrine, man has
forgotten the original essence of pain as of pleasure or
enjoyment. "As if under the dominion of the will of man, the
access to both the essence of pain and the essence of joy had
been closed."
Modernity experiences pain as negativity, as a negative
power, which can be eliminated by various techniques. Its
treatment as a negative entity is aimed at predicting and
increasing power and security. The technician or scientist does
not ask about the essence of pain, only applies the procedures,
to mitigate it. But behind the veil of prevention that supports
modernity with the use of technique, it is hidden that the more
exacerbates prevention against pain, the more pain is present.
Heidegger attempts to solve the enigma of pain and its
objectification by making it a threshold that unites and
separates the entrance and exit of the dwelling, the enclave
where the gods and mortals meet and separate at the same
time.
Under various techniques, the development of Western
metaphysics attempted to neutralize or give meaning to pain,
thus obscuring its essence more and more.
The power and security that are made full consciousness and
present in the modern subject in order to control the pain goes
back to the origins of history.
The resistance to the pain consist in the validation and
legitimation of the categories of automation and calculation,
in Jungers words. The individual freedom at the end enables
human existence to resist the perfection of technology, and its
categories, is the allowance for human existence to pain.
Jungers figure the forest rebel longs of a higher form of life
beyong the empty doctrines of nihilism and resist the
automatism and not to draw to is ethical conclusion, which is
fatalism
With the advent of modern science as we know it, a new
suffering arises, medical pain, possible to be controlled, and
perhaps eradicated. It is about objectification and location in
the body of a type of physical ailment. Pain can be a symptom
of disease or a disease in itself. In the first case, it is a useful
physiological alarm signal; In the second, it has no purpose
and can constitute a starting point for another organic or
psychological pathology. But under this medical conception of
pain, the source of pain departs from its original truth. One
might wonder whether letting go of the pain would mean
giving up all analgesic therapy.
Perhaps the metaphysical interpretations distort the real
experience of suffering, but are necessary to ask about the
origins of the same and to abstract from the pain that becomes
flesh, as much as possible. This could mean a possible way to
face it in another way and to be a balm for the mourner.
Heidegger's advice is that we should not portray pain
anthropologically as a bad or unpleasant feeling, and this
statement aligns with his thinking about technique by
dismissing his merely instrumental or utilitarian conception.
Pain would then be the criterion of differentiation for things
and for the world.
The pain is also according to the contexts and modes of
recognition that there is about it. When do we recognize that
there is pain or suffering? From ancient times the expression
of pain through images, sounds or objects has been the
method to locate it and also to recognize it. The problem is to
find which of these manifestations are the most authentic
examples of the "true essence of pain." Rather there are
pluralities of denominations that approach this concept, paini
innomitati nameless pain-as Pietro Verri has called them.
That depends on the recognition according to the time and
according to the culture that is understood by pain. The
reflections on pain presents demands like thinking about the
pain, the body that suffers, about which procedures are used
for it, whether medical, psychological, religious, and attend a
particular social and cultural context. Without chronological
location, pain is indefinable.

In order to reconstruct a history of Western pain, it is

necessary to investigate the techniques that have been
developed to support it. In order for pain to exist as such, it
must be recognized first. Pain is affected by the technical
means that are used to eradicate it, pain depends on them to
exist. The suffering mitigated by a Hindu shaman is not the
same pain as a person who will undergo surgery under the
effect of analgesics. Men belonging to pre-anesthetic cultures
aspire less to correct the being of pain, living with it. Such
pain generates changes in sensitivity, but it is not an intention
to discipline pain. Both the redemptive pain, which sanctifies
according to Catholicism, the initiatory pain of Buddhism, or
epic pain refer to changes brought about in sensitivity but
which incorporate suffering without rejecting it. According to
Wittgenstein, there is an intercultural constant that occurs in
the history of Pain that is the same natural history. The
expressions of pain vary according to the time and culture, but
pain refers us to a natural common root and on that root, are
born different symbolic systems. No interpretation has
invented pain out of nothing.

Copyright @ University of Buenos Aires

Copyright @ Glenda Jensen

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