The puzzle I take up in this paper—what I call the puzzle of better-because-worse suffering—is that there seem to be cases in which allowing ourselves to suffer more feels, in a hard-to-characterize but striking and sometimes even transformative way, better. The three cases I consider are (i) so-called ‘acceptance-stage’ grief-experiences, (ii) aesthetic experiences with strongly negative emotional content, and (iii) certain experiences of suffering in ‘open-monitoring’ meditation. The cases are puzzling because, unlike ones in which suffering has instrumental, epistemic, moral, constitutive, ‘realizer,’ or ‘signatory’ value, these seem to involve almost nothing more than an increase in suffering. What makes them different seems to be something intrinsic to the increased-suffering experience itself, taken on its own and experienced just as suffering. Theories of the nature of suffering, I argue, together with theories on grief, the paradox of tragedy, and the nature of meditation, would do well to join forces and address this challenge. My own proposed solution is that better-because-worse suffering-experiences, in contrast to just-plain-bad suffering-experiences, have a very different attentional profile: while both kinds of suffering feature affectively negative attitudes with a great deal of control over our attention, better-because-worse suffering also features a highest-order attitude of attentional receptivity that robs our suffering of some of its worst effects, somewhat paradoxically, just by giving it un-resisting attentional space. I close with a discussion of ethical implications, guided by a philosopher with strikingly parallel views of suffering and receptivity: Simone Weil.
Subjectivism and objectivism are strongly supported by different cases. But participants in the debate between the two, and the debate about well-being generally, assume they are theorizing about the same thing: thus, one view must be mistaken. This creates a tricky situation I call “Well-Being Deadlock.” There are two ways of responding to Well-Being Deadlock: (A) retain the assumption that the views are getting at the same thing and argue that one is wrong about it (or that a hybrid of the two is correct) or (B) deny the assumption and argue that the views are getting at different things that have been conflated thus far. Given the difficulty of (A) and the fact that the literature has mainly pursued it over (B), I explore (B) in this paper. To do this, I first assess the two existing versions of (B), as well as a third possible one, and argue that they fail to satisfyingly dissolve well-being deadlock and don’t answer several important questions. I then motivate and fill out my own version of (B) that avoids these problems. On this view, there are two different kinds of well-being that have been conflated thus far which the cases involved in Well-Being Deadlock pry apart.
Kant discusses conscience when addressing one’s duty to oneself as self-judge. Most likely, this duty is the duty to cultivate conscience. For him, conscience is the condition of all duties, and duties to oneself are a condition of all duties. This might be taken to suggest that the duty to oneself as self-judge is a primary duty that can be a condition of all duties. However, Kant also suggests that cultivating conscience can be seen as an indirect duty. This has been taken to imply that cultivating conscience can have only instrumental value – that it cannot be a direct duty to the self, but merely a means to discharging duties to others. I wish to highlight the importance of this duty by arguing that we need not presuppose that cultivating conscience is either a duty to oneself or an instrument for fulfilling other duties. In my view, the duty to cultivate conscience is morally relevant in its own right and an instrument that is constitutive of our moral self-improvement. This is where the importance of the Kantian duty to oneself as self-judge lies.
The ‘Now What?’ Problem for error theorists concerns what we should do with moral discourse, if it transpires to be systematically untrue. The recommendation that we abolish moral discourse (abolitionism) is often attacked on the basis that it sacrifices the useful functions morality performs. One such function is morality’s use as an intrapersonal commitment-device – it (supposedly) bolsters self-control and prevents us from frustrating our future goals, despite our momentary temptations to do so. Abolitionists attack this argument by claiming that error theorists lack the means to preserve moral judgements as a commitment-device, arguing that (for example) whatever attitudes error theorists could have towards moral claims, they could not be robust enough to inspire the required motivational change (to sustain a commitment-device). Few abolitionists, however, have considered the range of effective amoral commitment-devices at their disposal. In fact, there are good reasons to suspect that these might be as effective as, if not more effective than, moral commitment-devices. If this is true, it demonstrates that preservationists have seriously overestimated the indispensability of moral judgements as commitment-devices.
This article examines the ethical significance of suffering through Theodor W. Adorno’s critical theory, focusing on his concept of the somatic addendum, an embodied moral impulse that resists suffering and fosters solidarity. Drawing on Adorno’s post-Auschwitz moral philosophy and his notion of a “new categorical imperative,” the paper develops a non-instrumental conception of moral response emerging within a dialectic of mimetic relations. It contends that ethical attention to suffering requires not only rational reflection but also embodied receptivity to others’ pain, a responsiveness often suppressed by the normative coldness of contemporary social orders. Drawing on Judith Butler’s account of normative framing, the article shows how embodied responsiveness is socially conditioned in advance, structured by frames that determine whose suffering is recognisable and grievable. In light of this framing, I argue that Adorno’s concept of mimesis, understood as a historically mediated and socially imbricated mode of relation, explains how such responsiveness can both be organised into domination and, at moments, exceed the frames that seek to contain it. The result is a conception of solidarity as a mimetically structured, affectively charged, and critically reflective relation to suffering that resists both formal moral rationalism and the political capture of embodied response.
