Why Does Chronic Pain Hurt So much?

November 1, 2022

(The Atlantic) – That pain represents the body in distress, bringing it into focus, helps us better understand why it is bad. Pain disrupts what the philosopher and physician Drew Leder calls the “transparency” of the healthy body. We don’t normally attend to the body itself; instead, we interact with the world “through” it, as if it were a transparent medium. Being in pain blurs the corporeal glass. That’s why pain is not just bad in itself: It impedes one’s access to anything good. (Read More)