Disease and social theory: A problem of conversation

The paper offers a critical examination of ‘introspection’ and ‘stoicism’ as two apparently opposing responses to pain, and examines their adequacy as theoretical postures vis-a-vis the life-world. Following Wittgenstein, who suggests that introspection is fundamentally at fault, the paper moves to consider the ‘theoretic’ stoicism of Durkheim as a possible alternative for inquiry. It comes to the conclusion, however, that stoicism, just as introspection fails to develop a strong theoretical interest in pain when it refuses to make the problem pain poses for discourse conversational.