ABSTRACT
Pain is fundamental to our lived experiences as human beings. A painless existence is not conducive to human flourishing. The point is that in whatever manifestation, pain is a fundamental part of human life. This is in part why a phenomenological approach to thinking about pain is so important. A phenomenology of illness addresses what it means for human beings, both individually and as part of social, familial, and communal networks, to live with an illness. Pain isolates because it paradoxically connects the sufferer to the body at the same time it separates the sufferer from the body. Outside of pain and illness experiences, our bodies are generally absent from our attention. A phenomenology of pain is crucial because only by understanding the features of the pain sufferer's lifeworld can ethical strategies be developed for easing the existential suffering.
