Um intérprete da experiência contemporânea: Paul Ricœur e a compreensão do sofrimento

Abstract

In this text, Paul Ricœur seeks to clarify the understanding we have of the human, as a being capable of suffering, to endure suffering. For this, the author is not based on clinical experience or nosography of mental disorders, but resorts to the most common and universal human experience of suffering. Ricœur assumes as premise of his reflections the consideration that only those who can act can also suffer. From it, it adopts as a working hypothesis that suffering consists in the reduction of the power to act. Outlining a hermeneutic phenomenology of suffering, Ricœur examines the signs of this decrease in the domains of the word; the action itself; the narrative and the self-esteem of itself. The author also examines how suffering occurs as a change in the relationship with oneself and with others. Suffering gives rise to thought: it interrogates, summons, teaches. But what does it teach?