Early Influences: Pain and Promise

Abstract

As I noted in Chapter 1, one key approach that has devalued if not excluded our bodies from our conception of human nature has been the tradition of considering particular beings in terms of a feature that provided that being with its permanent, ongoing character notwithstanding observable changes in its properties. Aristotle stands at a central point in this account. His works clearly engage in the traditional debate about the concept of substance and display the tensions that have remained at the heart of the debate about the nature of any being or thing, which I call the ‘tradition questions’ in Chapter 1. Those questions include the following: How might the experience of limitation and pain be reconciled with the security and immutability of a nature or substance? Could uncertainty, anxiety, and pain ever work towards the human good?