Pain as an Experience Intertwined to Hope

A phenomenological analysis

Abstract

The main objective of this article is the elaboration and the development of an argument that has the purpose of showing the possibility that certain painful experiences can serve as a base on which hope, a moral emotion, can arise. To fulfill this goal, I will need to explain in what sense moral emotions are distinguished from any other type of emotion, then to show that even though pain cannot be considered by itself as a moral emotion; it will not be possible to extrapolate this statement to deny a possible participation of pain in these experiences. The crux of the matter will be that pain, by intervening the normality with which the subject lives his life, manages to dislocate the trust that the world has, giving way to a despair that opens an interpersonal link with the other, an essential characteristic of the moral emotions. The nexus between hope and pain will correspond to the acceptance of the human being's own finiteness in their own actions to significantly alter the situation in which they find themselves