Summary of "Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering"
Overview
Scott Samuelson's "Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering" explores different philosophical approaches to understanding and confronting suffering that seems meaningless. The book argues that modern society has lost its way in relating to suffering by seeing it primarily as a problem to be fixed rather than as something that must also be faced. Samuelson presents a fundamental paradox: humans must simultaneously accept and reject suffering - we must fight against it while also recognizing it as an inescapable part of what makes us human.
The Fundamental Paradox of Suffering
Samuelson identifies two primary human responses to suffering:
- The Fix-It Attitude: Seeking to minimize, eliminate, or solve suffering through technology, medicine, politics, etc.
- The Face-It Attitude: Accepting suffering as necessary for human growth, meaning, and depth
Most modern approaches heavily favor the fix-it attitude, which risks hollowing out human experience. The book argues that both attitudes are essential, and the tension between them creates the paradox at the center of human existence.
Modern Approaches to Suffering
1. Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill)
Mill represents the view that we should eliminate pointless suffering. His utilitarian approach suggests happiness is the ultimate goal and suffering should be minimized. However, his own life story reveals the paradox - when he experienced deep depression, it was poetry and emotion (not utility calculations) that saved him.
Example: Mill's education was designed to make him a perfect utilitarian machine, but this left him emotionally stunted until he discovered Wordsworth's poetry, which helped him understand that meaning sometimes requires embracing rather than eliminating suffering.
2. Nietzschean Embrace of Suffering
Nietzsche argues we should embrace suffering as essential to human greatness. His concept of the "eternal return" asks whether we would be willing to live our lives over and over, including all its pain.
Example: Nietzsche suffered from debilitating migraines but came to see them as something that deepened his philosophy and made him stronger. He maintained that "what does not kill me makes me stronger."
3. Arendtian Responsibility
Hannah Arendt focuses on how modern society creates new forms of suffering through bureaucracy and technology. She argues we must take responsibility for the suffering we cause, even when it occurs through systems that seem to disperse responsibility.
Example: Arendt's analysis of Adolf Eichmann shows how modern bureaucracy allows people to inflict terrible suffering while claiming "I just work here" - a dangerous abdication of human responsibility.
Perennial Approaches to Suffering
4. Suffering Reveals God (Book of Job)
The Book of Job suggests that pointless suffering reveals the transcendent mystery of God. When Job suffers terribly despite his goodness, God doesn't explain but reveals the unfathomable complexity of creation.
Example: When Job's friends try to explain his suffering with tidy theological formulas, God condemns them while praising Job who honestly confronted his pain. God's speech from the whirlwind doesn't justify suffering but elevates Job to see beyond human categories.
5. Suffering Atones Us with Nature (Stoicism/Epictetus)
Epictetus, a former slave who became a philosopher, teaches that we should accept suffering as part of the natural order. By aligning ourselves with nature's rhythm, we find freedom even amid constraints.
Example: When Epictetus's master broke his leg, he reportedly said "I told you so" with equanimity. This represents the Stoic view that external events cannot harm our inner freedom if we refuse to judge them as bad.
6. Suffering Evokes Our Humanity (Confucius)
Confucius shows how suffering calls forth our humanity through ritual practices that help us navigate pain and loss together.
Example: When Confucius's favorite student Yan Hui dies young, Confucius abandons philosophical explanations and simply grieves openly. This honest confrontation with suffering creates the space for genuine human connection.
7. Suffering Inspires Art (Blues Music)
The blues tradition demonstrates how suffering can be transformed into art that doesn't eliminate pain but gives it dignity and meaning.
Example: Sidney Bechet's jazz classic "Blue Horizon" transforms the painful legacy of slavery into something beautiful without denying the reality of that suffering. This "blues-understanding" allows us to recognize our shared vulnerability.
Central Insights
- The Soul-Making Function: Suffering, while not good in itself, is essential to human growth and meaning-making. As John Keats wrote, we live in a "vale of soul-making" where difficulties are necessary to develop our humanity.
- Blues-Understanding: Samuelson coined this term to describe a way of relating to suffering that extends compassion without denying reality. It recognizes injustice and pain while affirming our shared humanity.
- Suffering Humanly: The conclusion draws on Montaigne's idea that we should "suffer humanly" - neither denying pain nor being defined by it, but incorporating it into a meaningful life.
- The Paradox Cannot Be Resolved: There is no perfect formula for balancing the acceptance and rejection of suffering. Each philosophical approach offers valuable insights, but none provides a complete answer.
Contemporary Relevance
Samuelson connects these philosophical insights to contemporary issues like mass incarceration, arguing that our "War on Crime" represents a fix-it attitude toward suffering that paradoxically creates new forms of suffering. He advocates approaches like restorative justice that maintain both accountability and humanity.
The book ultimately argues that our modern technological society needs to recover the paradoxical wisdom of both facing and fighting suffering if we are to maintain our full humanity in an age increasingly oriented toward technical solutions to human problems.
Appendix: more on the Book of Job
4. Suffering Reveals God (Book of Job)
In this chapter, Samuelson explores how the Book of Job addresses the problem of pointless suffering. Unlike many religious texts that try to justify suffering as punishment for sin or as part of a divine plan, Job presents a more complex view.
The Story and Its Meaning
Job is a righteous man who suffers terribly despite his goodness. After losing his children, wealth, and health, Job's friends try to explain his suffering through conventional religious wisdom - suggesting he must have sinned or that God is testing him. Job rejects these explanations and demands answers from God.
When God finally appears, He doesn't explain why Job suffered. Instead, God speaks from a whirlwind about the vastness and complexity of creation - describing everything from the foundations of the earth to the habits of wild animals. God essentially says, "Can you comprehend the universe I've made? Then how can you comprehend why suffering exists?"
The Paradox of Suffering and Faith
Samuelson argues that what makes Job profound is that:
- God praises Job for his honest questioning rather than his friends who offered neat theological explanations
- Job's suffering isn't justified or explained, but placed in a larger context of mystery
- The experience of pointless suffering actually brings Job into a deeper relationship with God
Example: When Job's friends sit with him in silence for seven days before speaking, they're at their most helpful. It's when they try to explain his suffering that they fail him. Similarly, when modern people face tragedy, our presence matters more than our explanations.
The Philosophical Insight
The chapter suggests that suffering reveals God not by proving divine existence but by opening us to mystery and transcendence. God doesn't solve the problem of evil but transforms it into a mystery we must live with.
Example: Samuelson contrasts Job's happy ending (where he gets new children and wealth) with the Christian resurrection story. Unlike Job's new family, which seems to replace what was lost, Jesus keeps his wounds even after resurrection - suggesting that suffering becomes part of our identity rather than being erased.
The paradox is that accepting our inability to understand suffering can actually be liberating. It allows us to maintain both our ethical objections to pointless suffering and our sense of meaning in a universe that contains it.
Does this explanation help clarify the chapter on Job?
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