Topics Ethics

Question Is all suffering morally relevant, even if brought upon oneself? If a person takes part in an activity where they might expect to suffer and that they could choose to abandon at any time, but persist because they think that the suffering will stop and the activity will become engaging, does their suffering still matter?

Accepted:
April 5, 2012

Comments

One common view is that suffering is always morally relevant, in the sense that there's always a moral presumption against knowingly allowing suffering that you could (easily enough) prevent, especially when you're uniquely positioned to prevent it. But often this presumption is overcome, as when parents rightly allow their children to suffer painful vaccinations for their own good, or a coach rightly allows athletes to suffer during a grueling workout that improves their performance. We sometimes (although not always) respect an autonomous agent's choice to suffer for reasons we don't think are good reasons, as when we allow adults to try particular stunts from "Jackass" just because someone dared them to. All of this is compatible, I think, with the claim that suffering is "loaded" in the morally negative way I sketched above. You may find something useful in this SEP entry.