Symbolic Palliatives or Biotechnological Interventions? Responses to Illness, Pain, and Suffering
Symbolic Palliatives or Biotechnological Interventions? Responses to Illness, Pain, and Suffering

Summary/Abstract: My study examines two divergent modes of conceptualizing illness, pain, and suffering, each grounded in distinct philosophical horizons. Phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, David Le Breton, et al.) regard these experiences as existential events that inscribe meaning upon the lived body; pain here emerges as a liminal phenomenon that discloses vulnerability and opens a symbolic space for reinterpreting the self. By contrast, transhumanist discourse (David Pearce, Nick Bostrom) construes pain as a design flaw – an intolerable biological defect, epistemically reduced to neurochemical dysfunction and technologically destined for eradication, stripped of emotional and symbolic complexity. This opposition highlights broader questions of finitude and the salvific aspirations projected by contemporary technological imaginaries.

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