Disease, Pain, & Sacrifice

Book excerpt: How shall human suffering be conceptualized? In this succinct, deeply beautiful book, David Bakan has drawn upon recent biological and psychiatric research, as well as biblical sources, in an effort to understand the very condition of human mortality. Bakan has neither aspired to the abstraction of theological statements nor descended to a purely reductionist position. He states, "I do not know what divinity is there outside the compass of man's humanity". He is convinced, however, that human suffering is a paradox: for consciousness is a precondition for suffering as well as its management; and bodily disorder, despite the traditional claims for immortality, is biologically inherent in human growth.