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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
In The Body in Pain, one of the most brilliant and influential late twentieth-century philosophical studies of the nature of pain, Elaine Scarry argues that it is impossible to share in other people's pain :
when one speaks about ‘one's own physical pain’ and about ‘another person's physical pain’, one might almost appear to be speaking about two wholly distinct orders of events. [...] [F]or the person in pain, so incontestably and unnegotiably present is it that ‘having pain’ may come to be thought of as the most vibrant example of what it is ‘to have certainty’, while for the other person it is so elusive that ‘hearing about pain’ may exist as the primary model of what it is ‘to have doubt’. Thus pain comes unsharably into our midst as at once that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed.
On Scarry's analysis, it is the very essence of pain to resist compassion in its literal sense of ‘suffering with’ since it is fundamentally impossible truly to comprehend the pain of others – physically, emotionally or intellectually. Her insights would seem to be confirmed by experience : seeing a relative, spouse or friend in great pain may cause not only a sense of being powerless to alleviate their suffering but also a troubling awareness of the loneliness that comes with pain. Pain, as an interior bodily sensation, hidden from view, refuses to open itself up to others.
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