Espen Dahl

The inner tension of pain and the phenomenology of evil

ABSTRACT While there is no shortage of philosophical and theological occupations with the problem of evil and theodicy, the phenomenological basis from which the problem arises often gets lost in abstract accounts. In delimiting the case to physical pain, this article attempts to provide a perspective on the problem of evil following the lead from one of the problem’s sources. Through a phenomenological analysis of pain, the article highlights the inner tension that belongs to the experience of pain. This contradiction can be traced on various levels: pain as sensational impression (both given to consciousness and resisting integration), as bodily occurrence (both making the lived body emphatically mine and foreign), and as posing a question of meaning (both inviting a ‘Why?’ and contesting meaningfulness). This phenomenology of pain can provide a perspective on the origin and nature of the problem of evil: both why intellectual responses must arise and why it cannot reach an adequate solution.

Beginning, ending and remembering

Wittgenstein famously opens his Philosophical Investigations with a quotation in which Augustine recounts how he acquired language. Instead of going into the widely discussed question of how Wittgenstein relates to Augustines picture of language, this article inquires into what else might be at stake in invoking Confessions at the very beginning of his work. At the very least, such a gesture seems to suggest that Wittgenstein wants to inscribe himself into the Augustinian legacy. More specifically, this article argues that Philosophical Investigations centres on three problems that Wittgenstein has inherited from Augustine – namely what one might call the problem of beginning, the problem of ending and finally the problem of memory. The problem of beginning not only points to the local problem of how to start writing confessional philosophy, but also what authorizes such philosophy in the first place. The problem of ending concerns the direction of such philosophy and the problematic stance of its goal, while the problem of memory turns on the task of progressing from beginning to ending.