Hill, Christopher

What is suffering?

The existence of suffering has always been, either explicitly or implicitly, a fundamental philosophical concern. Yet what exactly constitutes suffering and how it occurs have been peculiarly taken for granted. As a result, the phenomenon of suffering is understood primarily through meaning creation and the pressing ethical imperative. Our understanding of what suffering actually is is ambiguous, partial, and inadequate which has consequential ethical implications. In recent years, this ontological deficiency has begun to be addressed. But what have been offered to date are, in my view, suspiciously Cartesian ontologies that inadequately describe the nature of suffering. As an alternative, therefore, I am attempting to uncover the character of suffering by analysing this phenomenon through the lens of process ontology.

I am currently researching the ontology of suffering at the University of Dundee under the supervision of Dr Tina Röeck and Dr Dominic Smith. I obtained an MA in Critical Theory and Culture Studies at the University of Nottingham in 2017; an MA in Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, also at the University of Nottingham in 2016; and a BA (Hons) Philosophy of Religion and Theology at Oxford Brookes University, 2015. The preceding and intervening years I worked Among These Dark Satanic Offices of various UK corporations.

Contact: [email protected]

I have created and delivered an undergraduate module on Introduction to / History of Continental Philosophy. I also have taught/teach undergraduate Phenomenology and Existentialism, as well as teaching seminar based courses on Heidegger's Being and Time and Spinoza's Ethics.

My teaching has therefore focused in particular on Ancient Greek philosophy, Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Bergson, Whitehead, Heidegger, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Arendt, Fanon, Structuralism, Derrida, Deleuze.

Suffering

Process philosophy

Pessimism/anti-humanism

Philosophy of motion/movement

Materialism

Existentialism