Person and suffering. When education goes to inaccessible places

Abstract

The issue of pain and suffering, a delicate and complex aspect of human existence and the main topic of interest and study of many sciences including philosophy, psychology and anthropology, requires, now more than ever, the attention and specific reflection of pedagogy. The aim is to help the person assign a meaning to their suffering, to place it in an axiological context, to transform it into an existential issue. In fact, there is no real sense of pain and suffering in today’s education. In this regard, Gadamer’s affirmation (in Wahrheit und Methode) is significant in explaining the sense in which the experience that includes suffering determines man’s being, recalling Aeschylus’ formula of learning through pain. Helping the person to accept and resist pain and manage the suffering that derives from it, making this relationship the accessible place of and for the cure, is the purpose of a reflection in which he seeks to highlight the pedagogical dimension of suffering.