Crisis, Suffering , Joy

Abstract

Suffering and pain are part of a second sense of the category of passion. Suffering and pain would be considered in constructivism as external to cognition. But this is not so as I could personally experience in having been subject to a chronic illness. Such illness does not diminish cognition generally, though it does so too at times, but it gives access to new forms of understanding. These forms of understanding are not the product of conscious construction but, if they are of the same nature as cognition, they have emerged. In this chapter, drawing on experiences such as living with chronic illness to show how illness, suffering, and pain can give rise to new forms of understanding. Such forms of understanding are possible precisely because of the undecidability concerning the difference between the body and the mind.