A Cry for Justice

The naturalisation of suffering refers to both its domestication, which robs it of its power to shock reason and opposes idealism, and its teleological history, in which suffering is just inherent in and necessary for history. Against this naturalisation by Western thinking, this book argues that the suffering of victims of history has a place in philosophy and, indeed, obliges philosophy to respond. Moreover, it asserts that the victims’ suffering is the intersection of philosophy and theology beyond idealism and dogmatism. In facing this challenge, these disciplines meet to raise victims’ suffering as a problem for thinking and a question to be answered philosophically. This book shows how, beyond ontological thinking, the divine identity of the end of history, and the Hegelian teleology of history, there is a new scenario for philosophical thinking. Between the thinking of totality and the ultimate revelation of God, it is necessary to account for victims and the categories that make it possible. Therefore, this book is a claim about the relevance of the marginalised to philosophy and against the intellectualism that ignores the singular and the contingent.