Suffering and the Edifying Love of Silence: Kierkegaard on Inwardness, Faith, and Existential Becoming

1. Introduction

Suffering is one of the most recurrent experiences of human existence and, at the same time, one of the most difficult to grasp conceptually. When one suffers, one often seeks a cause, an object, an explanation, or a purpose for what is happening. Suffering thus tends to be transformed into something that must be identified, explained, and ultimately eliminated.

It is precisely at this point that Søren Kierkegaard’s thought offers a possible shift in perspective. Through his pseudonyms and different forms of communication, Kierkegaard does not present suffering simply as a problem to be solved, but as an experience in which the individual is placed before oneself, before one’s possibilities, freedom, and relationship with the absolute.

The problem guiding this article can be formulated as follows: how can suffering in Kierkegaard be understood without reducing it to a psychological, medical, or explanatory object?

This question does not deny that suffering may have psychological, bodily, social, or historical dimensions. What is at stake is something else: asking about suffering as the experience of the one who suffers. Suffering is not primarily approached here as something whose external cause must be discovered, but as something that occurs in existence and requires the individual to establish a relation with oneself.

The hypothesis guiding the argument is that, in Kierkegaard, suffering can be understood as an existential experience that places the individual before the task of becoming singular.

This hypothesis is developed through four interconnected dimensions: inwardness, silence, indirect communication, and edification. Suffering leads the individual toward inwardness; inwardness reveals the limits of direct communication; this limit calls for indirect forms of communication; and indirect communication may assume an edifying function when it does not seek to replace the individual’s decision.

The question of love then emerges not as a therapeutic solution to suffering, but as a possible way of relating to the one who suffers. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard moves love from the sphere of mere emotion toward the sphere of existential demand. Love involves responsibility and a transformation in the way the individual relates to oneself and to the other.

Thus, the thesis of this article can be summarized as follows: suffering is not necessarily something that must be eliminated for existence to be fulfilled; in Kierkegaard, it can constitute a limit-experience in which the individual is called upon to appropriate existence. Silence and indirect communication preserve this appropriation, while love may assume an edifying function without claiming to abolish suffering.

2. Methodological Approach and Philosophical Corpus

This is a conceptual and hermeneutic philosophical article. The analysis does not seek to provide an exhaustive reconstruction of Kierkegaard’s entire work, but rather to follow a set of problems articulated around suffering, singularity, and edification. The primary corpus consists of works in which these questions receive decisive formulations: The Concept of Irony, Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, Repetition, Works of Love, and Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits.

The reading is guided by an interpretive question: how can suffering be understood as an experience of existence without immediately being converted into an object of classification? To answer this question, the article follows several movements within Kierkegaard’s thought: from pain to inwardness, from inwardness to anxiety, from possibility to choice, from choice to silence, and from silence to indirect communication.

The reference to existential-phenomenological clinical practice appears only as a possible consequence of the philosophical discussion. The aim is not to attribute a contemporary clinical theory to Kierkegaard, but to examine how his categories may contribute to thinking about a form of listening that preserves the singularity of the sufferer. This distinction is important because the central problem remains philosophical: the relation between suffering, existence, and singularity.

3. From Pain to Suffering: Tragedy and the Internalization of Experience

To understand suffering as an existential experience, it is necessary to distinguish it from pain. In the Kierkegaardian framework mobilized here, this difference appears particularly in the transition from ancient to modern tragedy. Pain can initially be understood as what presents itself immediately. It hurts, manifests itself, and provokes a response. Suffering, however, adds a reflective dimension to pain: pain becomes appropriated by the individual and related to one’s own existence.

It is in this sense that the expression “pain of pain,” present in Kierkegaard’s reading of the tragic, becomes important. Pain ceases to be merely what happens and becomes also what the individual relates to. Suffering thus acquires a reflective dimension.

The analysis of tragedy allows Kierkegaard to observe this transformation. In ancient tragedy, suffering is strongly connected to fate, guilt, inheritance, and objective circumstances. The figure of Antigone is particularly significant because it makes it possible to think about the relation between suffering, guilt, and belonging. In Greek tragedy, guilt may be received as inheritance. The individual participates in a history that precedes them. Punishment and suffering therefore possess an external and objective dimension.

In modern tragedy, however, inwardness gains greater importance. The individual does not merely suffer; the individual relates reflectively to one’s own suffering. This is where anxiety assumes a fundamental role. Anxiety is not simply a pain added to the individual, but a form of reflection through which the subject appropriates what happens. Kierkegaard characterizes modern tragedy through responsibility and the reflective internalization of experience (Kierkegaard 2008).

Modernity, therefore, does not eliminate the tragic. It internalizes it. Modern individuals become responsible for their existence and, precisely for this reason, become responsible before possibilities. Responsibility expands the field of choice and, with it, the possibility of anxiety.

Antigone, as reconstructed by Kierkegaard, thus ceases to be merely a character of ancient tragedy and becomes a figure of modern inwardness. Her secret, her guilt, her relation to her father, and her decision to bury her brother configure an experience in which suffering is not simply external. Antigone keeps within herself what cannot simply be transferred to the universal. Her suffering has a dimension of secrecy.

This transition also allows a dialogue with the phenomenological tradition of pain. Buytendijk observes that when pain persists, a dimension of silence and inwardness emerges that cannot be reduced to a causal explanation of the phenomenon (Buytendijk 2018). The point is not to deny the cause, but to recognize that the cause does not exhaust the meaning of the experience for the one who suffers.

A first proposition can therefore be established: suffering begins to acquire a properly existential character when it ceases to be merely what happens to the individual and becomes what the individual must relate to in inwardness.

4. Suffering and the Possibility of Existing

Existence, in Kierkegaard, cannot be separated from possibility. To exist means to find oneself before possibilities that require positioning, decision, and appropriation. It is within this horizon that suffering should be understood.

Suffering is not a choice in the sense that the individual voluntarily decides to suffer. Rather, suffering is what presents itself within an existence marked by possibility, choice, and responsibility. The individual suffers because one exists in a condition in which one must relate to oneself.

For this reason, suffering should not immediately be identified with an illness or psychological problem. In the philosophical register of this article, suffering is understood as an existential disposition, an experience that manifests ways in which the individual relates to one’s own existence. Holzhey-Kunz’s Daseinsanalysis is useful here as a later interlocutor because it draws attention to psychic suffering as an experience that cannot be adequately understood only through objectifying categories (Holzhey-Kunz 2018).

Suffering, therefore, does not necessarily need an external object that completely explains it. The one who suffers suffers. This does not mean that suffering has no causes. It means that no external cause exhausts the existential meaning of suffering for the one who experiences it.

In this sense, suffering can be understood as an experience that has meaning for the sufferer even when that meaning cannot immediately be transformed into a conceptual explanation. Suffering is therefore experience and not simply an object.

This distinction is decisive. When we transform suffering into an object, we risk speaking about it without listening to the one who suffers. When we recognize suffering as experience, the question becomes how the individual relates to what one suffers.

Existence thus becomes the space of this relation. This is why suffering can be understood as a mediator of choice. The individual does not necessarily choose to suffer, but must choose how to relate to what one suffers. Choice does not eliminate suffering; it transforms the individual’s relation to one’s own existence.

Freedom appears here not as the absence of suffering, but as the possibility of appropriation. Singular existence is constructed precisely when the individual ceases to dissolve into the universal and begins to answer for one’s own relation to possibilities.

5. Abraham and the Suffering of Choice

It is in Fear and Trembling, through Johannes de Silentio, that the question of suffering assumes its most radical formulation. Abraham receives from God the demand to sacrifice Isaac. The problem lies not simply in the act he is to perform, but in the impossibility of making his decision fully intelligible within the language of the universal.

Abraham cannot explain what he is doing without destroying precisely what characterizes his singular relation to God. Here the paradox appears. From the standpoint of the universal, Abraham should be able to justify his action. From the standpoint of faith, however, his relation to God cannot be fully translated into a universal justification.

For this reason, the Knight of Faith remains silent. Abraham’s silence should not be interpreted simply as an inability to speak. It is a situation in which objective language cannot account for the singularity of the relation.

The singular individual does not disappear because one cannot explain oneself; on the contrary, singularity appears precisely at the limit of explanation. Abraham’s suffering is therefore inseparable from choice. He suffers because he stands before a possibility that cannot be resolved by recourse to the universal.

This is where resignation and faith assume different functions. The movement of resignation recognizes impossibility; the movement of faith, however, does not end there. Faith constitutes a paradoxical relation to what cannot be guaranteed by objective knowledge. The Knight of Faith remains in existence without possessing a universal explanation capable of justifying his singularity (Kierkegaard 1990).

Abraham therefore constitutes the paradigmatic example for the thesis of this article: suffering can place the individual before a decision that cannot be delegated to the universal. Suffering, in this case, is not merely affliction. It is the place where singularity becomes a demand.

6. Silence, Inwardness, and Indirect Communication

If suffering has a dimension of inwardness, a problem of communication immediately arises. How can one communicate what, by its very singularity, cannot be fully translated into general concepts?

Kierkegaard addresses this question also through indirect communication. Direct communication seeks to transmit content that can be understood independently of the transformation of the recipient. Indirect communication, by contrast, seeks to place the individual before one’s own existence.

The aim is not to provide a ready-made answer. It is to make the listener encounter oneself. This is why irony, repetition, pseudonyms, and Kierkegaard’s different forms of writing are important. The author does not simply seek to teach content about existence. He constructs situations in which the reader must take a position (Kierkegaard 2006; Kierkegaard 2009).

Indirect communication preserves the freedom of the other. This is fundamental for understanding suffering. When someone suffers, an immediate response may attempt to explain the suffering, classify it, or quickly indicate what should be done. Yet an existential approach risks losing the singular when it transforms suffering into a particular case of a general category.

What belongs to the universal can be applied to many individuals. But the suffering lived by an individual is not exhausted by the category that describes it.

This is where silence assumes an edifying function. Silence does not mean absence of relation. Nor does it mean abandonment. Silence can constitute a way of not invading the inwardness of the one who suffers. Silence allows the other to remain responsible for one’s own existence.

Thus, silence and indirect communication are not opposites. Silence can be a modality of indirect communication when it prevents the listener from replacing the singular experience of the other with a ready-made explanation.

This reading is supported by Kierkegaard’s understanding that communicating existential truth is not merely the transmission of propositions. The truth that matters to the individual must be appropriated by the individual. Indirect communication is therefore not merely a stylistic device: it corresponds to the structure of an existence that cannot be lived by substitution.

7. Suffering as a School of Existence

In the Edifying Discourses in Various Spirits, especially The Gospel of Sufferings, Kierkegaard presents suffering as an experience that can teach. Yet it is necessary to understand carefully what it means to learn from suffering.

This does not mean glorifying suffering. Nor does it mean asserting that suffering is good in itself. What is learned is not simply information about suffering. One learns how to relate to one’s existence from within what cannot simply be eliminated.

Kierkegaard presents the school of suffering as an experience that accompanies existence. Suffering, in this perspective, does not function as an external discipline, but as an experience that can lead the individual toward self-appropriation. Suffering becomes a school when the individual can no longer simply flee from one’s own condition.

In this sense, the school of suffering is not a school of passive resignation. It is a school of inwardness. The issue is not mechanically enduring what happens, but learning how to relate to what happens.

Therefore, suffering can be understood as an experience of existential formation. Existence is the lesson; suffering is one of the conditions under which this lesson presents itself.

Indeterminacy also appears in this process. The possibility of choosing implies that one does not possess in advance an absolute guarantee about the path to follow. Freedom is inseparable from possibility, and possibility is inseparable from anxiety. The individual thus finds oneself in a paradoxical condition: one must choose without possessing complete control over the outcome of the choice.

It is within this space that suffering acquires its existential dimension. Not because suffering possesses a guaranteed positive purpose, but because human existence is constituted by relations with possibilities that cannot be completely mastered.

8. Suffering, Love, and Edification

If suffering should not be reduced to an object, neither can it simply be eliminated by introducing love. In Works of Love, Kierkegaard moves love from the sphere of mere emotion toward the sphere of existential demand. To love means to relate to the other in a way that does not reduce the other to what one desires from them (Kierkegaard 2007).

Therefore, love cannot be understood as a technique for eliminating suffering. Love does not cure suffering in the sense of making it disappear. Love can, however, transform the relation to the one who suffers.

This distinction is central to this article. Love that seeks to eliminate suffering immediately may end up objectifying the sufferer. By seeking a rapid solution, it risks failing to listen to the singularity of the experience.

Edifying love, by contrast, does not seek to occupy the place of the other’s decision. It accompanies. It listens. It remains. It does not transform the other into an object of intervention.

It is in this sense that we can formulate the notion of the edifying love of silence. This is not a love that remains silent out of indifference. It is a love that understands that there are experiences whose appropriation must remain with the person who lives them.

Silence, in this case, is not emptiness. It is space. It is the space in which the other can hear what only they can hear.

Love does not remove the individual from suffering; it can create relational conditions in which the individual is not reduced to the suffering one experiences. The distinction is decisive. To love does not mean making suffering disappear. To love may mean not abandoning the one who suffers to one’s own objectification.

In Kierkegaard, the demand of love for one’s neighbor also prevents the other from being treated as a mere object of our knowledge. Love is a practice, a responsibility, and a relation that must respect the alterity of the person before us (Kierkegaard 2007). Edification therefore appears not as an operation of control, but as a possibility of relation.

9. The Helper and the Listening of Suffering

This conception allows us to understand the figure of the “helper” present in the argument. The helper is not the one who possesses a definitive answer to the other’s suffering. If that were the case, the intervention would merely be a form of direct communication and objectification.

The helper is the one who accompanies the individual in the movement of appropriating one’s own existence. The figure of the helper is therefore close to the logic of indirect communication. The helper does not choose for the other, does not interpret suffering as though possessing a universal key capable of deciphering it, and does not replace the individual’s freedom.

The task is to preserve the possibility that the other can listen to what manifests itself in one’s own inwardness. This conception resonates with the existential-phenomenological tradition that appropriated Kierkegaard to think of clinical practice as an accompaniment of existence rather than a mere application of categories to an individual (Feijoo et al. 2013).

At this point, the article can establish a dialogue with existential-phenomenological clinical practice. This dialogue does not seek to turn Kierkegaard into a psychologist or to anticipate in him a contemporary clinical theory. The aim is more limited: to investigate how a Kierkegaardian understanding of singularity, inwardness, silence, and indirect communication may contribute to thinking about a form of listening that does not immediately objectify suffering.

From this perspective, clinical practice should ask not only “what does this individual have?” but also “how does this individual exist before what they suffer?” The change in the question is fundamental. The first seeks classification; the second seeks to understand an existence.

10. Discussion: Suffering, Singularity, and Edification

The path developed above allows us to return to the initial hypothesis. If suffering is understood only as an object, the singular experience of the sufferer tends to disappear behind the category used to describe it. Kierkegaard allows a shift in the problem because his philosophy of existence insists on the individual’s relation to oneself, to one’s possibilities, and to what cannot be resolved by the universal.

The distinction between pain and suffering constitutes the first movement of this interpretation. Pain may be immediate; suffering implies a reflective relation to what hurts. Modern tragedy, in Kierkegaard, is decisive because it places responsibility and inwardness at the center of experience. Antigone becomes, in this sense, a figure of transition: suffering ceases to be merely external fate and becomes charged with inward secrecy.

The second movement is possibility. The individual does not exist as a completely finished reality. One finds oneself before possibilities that demand choice. Choice does not mean absolute mastery over existence, but responsibility for the way the individual relates to what happens.

Abraham radicalizes this condition. The Knight of Faith does not possess a universal justification capable of dissolving the paradox of his decision. His silence is not a communicative defect; it is the mark of an experience that cannot be fully converted into objective discourse. Singularity appears precisely where universal explanation reaches its limit.

The third movement is indirect communication. If singular existence cannot be lived by another, neither can it be completely transmitted as an object. Indirect communication preserves freedom because it does not offer the individual a solution that replaces one’s own decision. This dimension helps explain why silence can assume an edifying function.

The fourth movement is love. Love does not constitute a negation of suffering. If suffering is an experience of existence, love need not be conceived as what eliminates it. Love can become a form of relation that accompanies suffering without objectifying it.

The expression edifying love of silence seeks to name precisely this relation. It is a form of love that does not abandon the other, but also does not occupy the place of the other’s inwardness. Silence, in this case, means refusing to speak in the other’s name.

This formulation also requires caution. Suffering should not be transformed into a moral value, nor should it be asserted that all suffering leads to edification. Suffering can destroy, disorient, and interrupt possibilities. Kierkegaard’s contribution does not lie in automatically attributing a positive meaning to suffering, but in showing that the individual must existentially relate to what happens.

Precisely for this reason, edification must be understood as a possibility rather than a guaranteed result. The experience of suffering may open a task of appropriation, but it does not ensure in advance that this task will be accomplished.

This distinction protects the interpretation from a moralizing reading of suffering. The point is not to say that suffering is necessary for someone to become better. The point is to affirm that, when suffering occurs, existence is confronted with an experience that cannot be entirely delegated to an external explanation.

Thus, the main contribution of the proposed reading is to think of a relation to suffering in which singularity is not lost. Suffering may be investigated, accompanied, and interpreted, but it should not be reduced to a thing existing separately from the one who suffers.

11. Conclusions

This article began with a question: how can suffering in Kierkegaard be understood without reducing it to a psychological, medical, or explanatory object?

The answer developed here allows us to affirm that suffering, within the Kierkegaardian horizon reconstructed in this article, can be understood as an existential experience that places the individual before the task of becoming singular.

The analysis of tragedy showed that the transition from objective suffering to reflective internalization changes the individual’s relation to what one suffers. Antigone appears as a figure of this inwardness because her suffering cannot be separated from secrecy, guilt, responsibility, and her relation to what only she knows.

Abraham radicalizes this situation. In Fear and Trembling, the Knight of Faith finds himself before a decision that cannot be fully justified by the universal. His silence is not simply an absence of communication; it is an index of the paradox of singularity.

Indirect communication preserves precisely this dimension. It does not seek to replace the individual’s freedom with a ready-made answer. Rather, it seeks to create a situation in which the individual can relate to oneself.

From this perspective, suffering is not necessarily what must be eliminated for existence to be fulfilled. It can constitute an experience in which the individual is placed before the very possibility of existing. This does not mean glorifying suffering or claiming that every form of suffering has a positive purpose. It means recognizing that lived suffering possesses a dimension that cannot be entirely captured by an external explanation.

On the basis of Works of Love, love should likewise not be understood as a cure for suffering. Love may assume an edifying function because it allows a relation with the sufferer without transforming the experience into an object of domination.

This is where the meaning of the edifying love of silence can be found: a mode of relation in which silence does not mean abandonment but preservation of inwardness; in which love does not seek to eliminate the other’s experience but to accompany it; and in which listening does not take the place of the decision of the one who suffers.

Suffering is therefore not the final word about existence. But neither does it need to be eliminated for existence to have meaning. Between suffering and existence lies the space of choice; between choice and inwardness, the space of anxiety; between inwardness and language, the space of silence; between silence and relation, the possibility of indirect communication; and between suffering and relation to the other, the possibility of edifying love.

Thus, Kierkegaard’s contribution to an existential understanding of suffering does not lie in offering a theory that definitively explains why human beings suffer. His contribution lies in shifting the question to another dimension: what happens to the individual when one must exist before what one suffers?

It is in this shift that suffering ceases to be merely an object and comes to be understood as experience. It is also in this shift that silence can cease to be absence and become listening; communication can cease to be transmission and become possibility; and love can cease to be a promise of cure and become a form of edification.