Abstract
Pain has been a topic of the religious imagination across cultures and centuries. It has provoked a wide range of imaginative responses ranging from artistic depictions, narratives to its instrumentalization for specific purposes. In this essay, I seek to inquire into the relation of pain and the religious imagination by paying special attention to pain's role as a border.
As a border to religious imagination, pain marks both an end to and beginning for it. I intend to show that pain's constitutive function as a border rests on its dual nature as both a not-sensical affection of the Real and as a complex mediated phenomenon. My attempt at a description of the ambiguity of pain ins mainly informed by Hans Rainer Sepp's theory of the corporeality of human existence.
I begin with a presentation of Sepp's thinking which enables me to win an understanding of religion as an imaginative reaction to the demands posed upon us by our corporeality (chapter 2). My definition of religion as an imaginative means of stabilization enables me to access current discussions of pain in religious contexts. Before explicitly discussing them, some general remarks on pain as a fleshly affection are presented (chapter 3). Of the variations of pain in religious contexts discussed by Salim, I focus on the notion of senseless pain (chapter 4), which I interpret as a threat to the imaginative stabilization reached by religion. With Dahl, I show how this threat may in turn lead to a fortification of the stability found in religious sense. Concerning instrumental pain, I briefly sketch possible interpretations (chapter 5).