DESPRE DURERE. PROLEGOMENE ALE ȘTIINȚELOR UMANISTE MEDICALE
ON PAIN: PROLEGOMENA TO THE MEDICAL HUMANITIES

Summary/Abstract: This article explores the conceptual foundations of Medical Humanities by bridging the domains of medical science and the humanistic disciplines—philosophy, anthropology, semiotics. Beginning with the basic definitions of illness, pain, and suffering in clinical discourse, the study argues for an expanded, interdisciplinary approach to healing—one that addresses the symbolic and existential dimensions of the human condition. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s foundational texts, and tracing their transformation through the works of Paul Ricœur and David Le Breton, the paper underscores the necessity of a hermeneutic understanding of pain and illness. Rejecting a simplistic dichotomy between clinical rationality and humanistic insight, the study proposes that biological explanations alone are insufficient for grasping the full experience of being ill. Pain, illness and suffering unfold within bodies that are socially and symbolically constructed, and must be understood as such. Illness is not merely a physiological malfunction but a rupture in personal identity, an existential crisis that calls for reflexivity, reorientation, and narrative reconfiguration. Moreover, suffering—never merely a private experience—calls for an intersubjective space of recognition, where clinical encounters are understood as life-scenarios requiring dialogical engagement, attentive listening, and ethical responsiveness. This reconceptualization does not diminish the medical act; rather, it reclaims it as a spiritually grounded practice—one in which the human being is approached as an integrated whole: body, mind, emotion, and story.

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