The Way of Suffering: A Geography of Crisis by Miller, Jerome(January 1, 1989) Paperback

by Jerome A. Miller

Focuses on the experience of crisis as the undermining attempts to keep control of our lives. This title discusses topics such as the nature of vulnerability, the difference between ordinary fear and metaphysical dread, and the ordinary avoidance of suffering.

Genres: Philosophy, Psychology

Paperback

First published June 1, 1988

About the author

JEROME ALOYSIUS MILLER earned his Ph.D. from Georgetown University and is now professor emeritus of philosophy at Salisbury University, Maryland. Specializing in philosophy of religion and Continental philosophy, he has authored 'The Way of Suffering: A Geography of Crisis' (1988) and 'In the Throe of Wonder: Intimations of the Sacred in a Post-Modern World' (1992). He has completed work on a yet-unpublished work tentatively titled 'In the Throe of the Future: A Traumatological Inquiry into History, Culture, and Normative Order.'

Reviews

[Jackal42 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book maps a sequence of calamitous and yet transcendent events to and of consciousness that is the result of the continuous and excessive obstruction of 'the-will-to-control'. It is here we find crisis as a kind of horrific revelation of fatality, a fatality that includes death but is also beyond it, a fatality which is the recognition of being without exception a victim of existence. The book begins with this veiled consciousness of horror but through various and harrowing transcendent turns maps the arrival of consciousness to a kind of reverent awe of existence, a deep rooted and humble acceptance of fatality itself.

For me the key theme this book explicitly brings to focus is the constitutional human compulsion to control in the face of the chaotic futility of existence, and the contortions of the self to maintain the illusion of agency. This is a theme that I think is an essential part of the human character. A theme which although it can be found in other existential works on the human condition, you often have to read between the lines to find it.

[Jake McCulley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for the faint of heart. Will challenge you emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. Like Nietzsche but a couple of steps more depressing. Still, it can be life-affirming at rare moments.