The experience of pain, loss, or evil that affects the whole person — bodily, psychic, spiritual. Suffering may be caused by illness, guilt, injustice, or the loss of beloved persons. It touches the person in her wholeness and points to her vulnerability and contingency.
Suffering and Art
The greatest art in human history springs from the experience of finitude, loss, and the question of the meaning of suffering. AI has no mortality, no suffering, no vulnerability — it can reproduce patterns of suffering, but it has no existential stake: nothing is at stake for it. The depth of human art is grounded in the experience that one’s own being is not necessary.
Suffering and Dignity
Even in suffering, the ontological dignity of the person remains inalienable. Suffering cannot reduce the person to a mere object. The Personalist Norm demands that suffering persons be affirmed precisely in their vulnerability.
Ontological classification:
- Superordinate concept: State
- Related concepts: contingency, vulnerability
Chapter assignment: Chapter 4: What Is Human Personhood?
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources: Bexten 2017, pp. 239, 254 (vulnerability and the First Dimension), pp. 271–289 (the Third Dimension and moral perfection). (German)