The Suffering Human Being

This edition originally published by Berghahn Books. Schopenhauer's treatise on ethics is presented here in E. F. J. Payne’s definitive translation, based on the Hubscher edition (Wiesbaden, 1946-1950). This edition includes an Introduction by David Cartwright, a translator’s preface, biographical note, selected bibliography, and an index. For convenient reference to passages in Kant's work discussed by Schopenhauer, Academy edition numbers have been added.

This briefs on human suffering adds to human understanding of suffering by contextualizing both stories and statistics on suffering, while showing that suffering adds a useful perspective to contemporary thought and research on quality of life, social well-being, and measures of societal progress. The scholarship on suffering is made more comprehensible in the book by using nine different conceptual frames that have been used for making sense of suffering. The primary focus of this work is with the last frame, the quality of life frame. Overall, this chapters show how the research on quality of life and well-being can be enhanced by embracing human suffering. ​

Only the most naïve or tendentious among us would deny the extent and intensity of suffering in the world. Can one hold, consistently with the common view of suffering in the world, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? This book argues that one can. Wandering in Darkness first presents the moral psychology and value theory within which one typical traditional theodicy, namely, that of Thomas Aquinas, is embedded. It explicates Aquinas's account of the good for human beings, including the nature of love and union among persons. Eleonore Stump also makes use of developments in neurobiology and developmental psychology to illuminate the nature of such union. Stump then turns to an examination of narratives. In a methodological section focused on epistemological issues, the book uses recent research involving autism spectrum disorder to argue that some philosophical problems are best considered in the context of narratives. Using the methodology argued for, the book gives detailed, innovative exegeses of the stories of Job, Samson, Abraham and Isaac, and Mary of Bethany. In the context of these stories and against the backdrop of Aquinas's other views, Stump presents Aquinas's own theodicy, and shows that Aquinas's theodicy gives a powerful explanation for God's allowing suffering. She concludes by arguing that this explanation constitutes a consistent and cogent defense for the problem of suffering.

This book challenges critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Such approaches stem from the quotation of Leopardi in Beckett’s monograph Proust, as part of a discussion about the removal of desire. Nonetheless, in contrast to ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is here presented as central in the two authors’ oeuvres. Desire in Leopardi and Beckett is read as lying at the cusp between the theories of Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, a desire that splits as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms ‘infinity’ as opposed to ‘totality,’ an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings).

In this book, Per Bauhn does three things. First, he outlines some aspects of contemporary philosophical views on animals and morality, including the criticism of speciesism and the animal rights argument. Second, he criticizes these views, arguing that we cannot escape a speciesist perspective on morality, and that there are no good reasons why we should believe that non-human animals have moral rights. Third, he argues that cruelty against non-human animals is morally wrong, but not because animal rights are being violated but because human agents who inflict cruelty on non-human animals are failing their duty to develop in themselves the virtue of justice. This latter argument is reminiscent of Immanuel Kant’s idea that we have only indirect duties towards animals, but unlike that idea, Bauhn's argument does not depend on any causal hypothesis that humans who are cruel to animals are likely to be cruel also to their fellow humans. Instead, Bauhn's argument relies on the fact that being cruel to non-human animals and other innocent beings is conceptually and logically inconsistent with the virtue of justice – a virtue which agents are rationally required to develop in themselves.

This volume brings together a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on a topic of central importance, but which has otherwise tended to be approached from within just one or another disciplinary framework. Most of the essays contained here incorporate some degree of interdisciplinarity in their own approach, but the volume nevertheless divides into three main sections: Philosophical considerations; Humanities approaches; Legal, medical, and therapeutic contexts. The volume includes essays by philosophers, medical practitioners and researchers, historians, lawyers, literary, Classical, and Judaic scholars. The essays are united by a common concern with the question of the human character of suffering, and the demands that suffering, and the recognition of suffering, make upon us.

The description of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 is a beloved biblical text with an unshakable place in the theology and self-understanding of the church. Since New Testament times, this text has fed the church's thinking about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Leading Old Testament theologian Gordon McConville offers a lively exposition of Isaiah 53 that is at once true to its Old Testament context, conversant with the history of interpretation, and deeply Christian. McConville illuminates the text's contribution to our apprehension of who Jesus is and explores the various ways the text can speak to us in faithfulness to its scriptural authority and character. The author explores the theological and spiritual issues that arise from the poetry's words and phrases and shows how this classic text can speak to the life of the church today. The Touchstone Texts series addresses key Bible passages, making high-quality biblical scholarship accessible to the church. The series editor is Stephen B. Chapman, Duke Divinity School.