The Human Person as the Subject of Suffering: The Values of Having, Doing, vs. the Values of Being By Janet E. Smith Suffering and Hope Conference University of St. Thomas November 10-13, 2005 Human beings undergo an enormous variety of suffering and we can hardly be said to like it. It is undeniable that some of us are true wimps: we find even the least amount of suffering — such as the niggling troubles of daily life — nearly intolerable, or at least an annoying and inexplicable blight on existences that we naively and foolishly expect should be unrelentingly pleasant. Rebate forms, negotiating endless menus in seeking tech support, traffic delays, misplaced keys, runs in our nylons or stains on our ties can bring out the pathetic whining in some of us. And then there is real suffering such as disease, injury, failure, disfigurement, heartbreak, living under tyranny, false imprisonment, disappointment and failure, confusion and depression, unjust treatment, loneliness, sorrow for our sins, fear of future suffering, regret for missed opportunities, poverty and exile, death of or abandonment by loved ones — and the list could go on. Still, suffering is not associated only with what is negative; we believe that suffering sometimes enhances our sense of achievement; it accompanies some of our most meaningful and cherished experiences, such as work and childbirth, athletic activities, study and all sorts creative endeavors. We have to admit that had we not had to work so hard to win the guy or the gal, the degree, the game, the battle or the job, we might not have enjoyed our success so much. And, of course, suffering can be an enormous source of growth and knowledge; who would not say that they have learned some of the most important truths in their lives through facing and living through some significant suffering? In spite of the fact that suffering is such a common experience, it is daunting to write about. Indeed, Pope John Paul II said that suffering “intimidates.” (Salvifici Doloris 5). Obviously suffering is a complicated and profound topic — and most everyone must acknowledge that there are others who have suffered much more than we ourselves have, and before whom we shudder to utter our feeble attempts at consolation and our platitudes about finding meaning in suffering, lest we sound like Job’s ineffectual interlocutors. Actually, apart from writing this paper and going to a lot of conferences, I haven’t suffered much in my life. It is always painful to write about something one knows little about — but that has been the story of my life, so this is not so very different. Even more ironically, most often I talk about sex, which perhaps could be perceived as a source of pleasure but which for me has become a source of “suffering” whereas, giving this talk about suffering is a welcome break from what is sometime a tedious routine, and thus a source of pleasure. Since I know so little about suffering I am not tempted to speak much in my own voice, rather I shall employ the self-protective good sense to draw upon the wisdom of others. Initially I am going to draw upon what John Paul II had to say about suffering in his 1 encyclical Evangelium Vitae,1 a document that very much should shape all considerations of the suffering entailed in end of life issues and of suffering in general. I will also be drawing upon John Paul II’s apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris2 or On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. The Latin properly translated means “On Redemptive Suffering” and I shall be using that title for the document throughout. In Salvifici Doloris, or in “On Redemptive Suffering” John Paul II focuses on the redemptive power of suffering; on the wondrous ability of man through suffering to share in Christ’s redemptive act. The individual who truly understands and embraces suffering will be one who unites his or her suffering to the suffering of Christ. That is the ultimate destination of the journey of suffering. I am not going to say much about that destination; rather, I am going to focus on the intermediate stages in the journey. Redemptive suffering is a profound theological topic beyond my grasp; my field is more philosophical and I am content to serve as a handmaiden to the higher discipline of theology. There are certain philosophical truths about the human person, illuminated and made richer by revelation, that I shall focus on here. While I will focus more on suffering as a school of understanding and a school of various virtues, Salvifici Doloris shall nonetheless remain a key source since there is ample material about these matters there. My primary focus will be: what does suffering tell us about the human person? The title of this talk, “The Human Person as the Subject of Suffering,” invites us to think about what is happening in the interior of the human person who is suffering. Suffering is not the same thing as feeling pain — pain can be a cause of suffering and can be a result of suffering, but suffering itself is the interior experience of bearing up under something that is being experienced as negative or troubling; Salvifici Doloris defines suffering as “the undergoing of evil before which man shudders.” (18) The experience of suffering is actually extremely important for the human person; among other things it helps the human person realize he or she is a person and what it means to be a person. Salvifici Doloris says exactly that: “in [suffering] the person discovers himself, his own humanity, his own dignity, his own mission.” (31) Discovering that we are persons and something of what it means to be a person, is essential to our happiness. Servais Pinckaers speaks of suffering as the great leveler: not everyone is beautiful or intelligent or rich but everyone suffers.3 If discovery of truth and the path to happiness depended upon beauty or intelligence or wealth or power, only a very few could have access to them; but if suffering is a reliable path to the discovery of truth and the path to happiness, they are thus in the grasp of everyone. To be a person and a subject means, among other things, having the ability to think and ponder and to draw conclusions about the meaning of life; it means the ability to choose between conflicting goods and to make decisions about how to live and thereby to shape one’s interior — to become a certain kind of person with a character formed by one’s choices. Being a person means feeling various emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, joy, 1 (1995: available online at www.vatican.va) 2 (1984: available online at www.vatican.va) 3 Servais Pinckaers. The Pursuit of Happiness —God’s Way: Living the Beatitudes, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Nobel, O.P. New York: Alba House, 1998. 82 2 delight, and love, and being aware that one experiences these feelings and having a desire to make some sense of these feelings; why do we fear what we fear or delight in what delights? Suffering is an experience that invites us to discover the “values of being,” of being a human person. In Evangelium Vitae John Paul II makes some sweeping observations about the modern world: He speaks of an “eclipse of the sense of God and of man” that “inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism.” The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one’s own material well-being. The so-called “quality of life” is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions — interpersonal, spiritual and religious — of existence. In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is “censored”, rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it ... (23, my emphasis) This text is packed with insight. The metaphor imbedded in talk of the “sense of God” being “eclipsed” suggests that it is no more possible to obliterate the sense of God than it is possible to obliterate the sun. But something can stand in the way of our basking in the light of the sun or experiencing the presence of God. Earlier in Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II had located the roots of the culture of death in the modern notion of “subjectivity” or the notion that the individual subject rather than objective reality is the arbiter of truth. This subjectivism has led to both skepticism and relativism and what is labeled a “tragic distortion of the meaning of freedom”, — or the freedom to do whatever one likes rather than the freedom to do what one knows to be good. This conjunction of distortions of reality is also of extreme concern to John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI. He has made the flight from objective truth into the dictatorship of relativism a theme of his early pontificate. If there is no objective truth, why shouldn’t we each live by whatever values appeal to us? If there is no truth and no God, then why must the individual be concerned with anyone, but himself or herself and his or her own pleasures, and not be free to live largely however he or she likes? Why should the autonomous individual endure sufferings beyond what he or she chooses, or be at the service of others who suffer? In the passage just cited John Paul II lists some of the consequences of the eclipse of the sense of God caused by subjectivism and a distorted view of freedom joined with a practical materialism that breeds individualism, utilitarianism, and hedonism.