Название: The Palliative Society
Автор: Byung-Chul Han
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Жанр: Афоризмы и цитаты
isbn: 9781509547258
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The Palliative Society
Pain Today
Byung-Chul Han
Translated by Daniel Steuer
polity
Originally published in German as Palliativgesellschaft. Schmerz heute © MSB Matthes & Seitz Berlin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Berlin 2020. All rights reserved.
This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13 978-1-5095-4725-8
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Dedication
Of all the corporeal feelings, pain alone is like a navigable river which never dries up and which leads man down to the sea. Pleasure, in contrast, turns out to be a dead end, wherever man tries to follow its lead.
Walter Benjamin*
Algophobia
Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!1 This line from Ernst Jünger can be applied to society as a whole. Our relation to pain reveals what kind of society we are. Pain is a cipher. It contains the key to understanding any society. Every critique of society must therefore provide a hermeneutics of pain. If pain is left to medicine, we neglect its character as a sign.
Today, a universal algophobia rules: a generalized fear of pain. The ability to tolerate pain is rapidly diminishing. The consequence of this algophobia is a permanent anaesthesia. All painful conditions are avoided. Even the pain of love is treated as suspect. This algophobia extends into society. Less and less space is given to conflicts and controversies that might prompt painful discussions. Algophobia also takes hold of politics. The pressure СКАЧАТЬ