Introduction: Constructions Of Physical Pain In Early Modern Culture

Abstract

That pain should play such a central role in one of the key early modern reflections on the mind-body question, and that Rene Descartes has so often been referred to, and frequently misread, in recent medical reflections on pain, suggests that it is worth investigating early modern attitudes towards physical pain more thoroughly, and in a wider range of historical sources. Early modern culture construes intense emotions as inherently physical; their physicality even serves as an index of their intensity. Paradoxically, then, it is precisely through the importance of the body in early modern notions of pain that the cultural dimensions of pain become clear. The Protestant attempt to downplay the importance of Christ's physical suffering may have been an effective means of chipping away at a central pillar of early modern Catholicism, yet it also created a problem. Keywords: early modern culture; medieval Catholicism; physical pain; Protestant tradition; Rene Descartes