ABSTRACT

Given that suffering comes in many forms, from Andrew Solomon’s depression and the author's mercifully short-lived agony to grief and loneliness and hunger, it’s a good question to ask what unifies them – what makes them all instances of suffering, and as such prima facie bad for the sufferer, with further motivational and normative consequences down the line. To begin unpacking the suggestion that suffering should be understood in terms of affective attitudes towards one’s situation, let’s consider what is and what isn’t part of one’s ‘situation’ in the relevant sense. The proposal also handles suffering from loneliness, since one need not have a localizable hurt to violently wish to be close to someone. In emphasizing the world-directed intentionality of suffering, the view differs steeply from what may well be the currently leading account in analytic philosophy, Michael Brady’s higher-order desire theory.