Flourishing Through Suffering
The Limits of Sentience and the Ethics of Communal Meaning-Making
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21598321 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thana C De Campos-Rudinsky (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 580-585 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0963-1801 • E-ISSN: 1469-2147 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s096318012610019x |
| PMID | 42037317 |
| OpenAlex | W7156287428 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
This paper revisits the longstanding debate over the nature of suffering, focusing on the divide between subjective and objective accounts. I defend a Personalist conception of suffering, rooted in an Aristotelian understanding of human flourishing, that recognizes suffering as both universally human and deeply personal. On this view, suffering is neither a purely sentient, inner experience nor reducible to external conditions, but a disruption of flourishing that arises when love or justice is violated or absent—and that calls for a communal response. Understood through this lens, suffering, I argue, invites a shared practice of meaning-making—not as sentimental optimism but as a form of grounded hope: realistic, responsive, and attuned to the dignity of both the sufferer and those who accompany them. Even when suffering cannot be cured or fully comprehended, it can be met with deeper engagement, mutual responsibility, and a reaffirmation of our commitment to a life lived in relation and shared purpose
Dignity · Economic Justice · Flourishing · Happiness · Human life · Sentience · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |