In Suffering and Virtue1, I examine and defend the idea that suffering plays vital roles in a good life, contrary to the prevailing wisdom that suffering is (always or typically) detrimental to happiness and well-being. In the book, whilst careful to acknowledge the obvious fact that suffering is in many cases deleterious to happiness, I propose that it can, nevertheless, have both intrinsic and instrumental value. I argue that forms of suffering can themselves constitute virtuous motives; that suffering is essential to the cultivation and development of virtues of strength and vulnerability; and that suffering is vital to the flourishing of social groups. Early on in the book I state, without much in the way of reason or argument, that suffering is most naturally used to refer to a negative experiential state. I then develop and defend an account of suffering, according to which suffering is negative affect that we mind, where minding is cashed out in terms of an occurrent desire that the negative affect not be occurring. In ‘Suffering as Significantly Disrupted Agency’, Jennifer Corns challenges my assumption that suffering is best understood as experiential, raises a number of objections to my account of suffering as an experiential phenomenon, and proceeds to develop her own non-experiential view. It will come as no surprise that I want to push back against her criticisms of my account, and have objections of my own to her non-experiential view. But in so doing, I hope to make a much stronger case for thinking of suffering as experiential than I did in Suffering and Virtue.

在苦难与美德中1、我检验并捍卫这样一种观点，即痛苦在美好生活中起着至关重要的作用，这与普遍的观点相反，即痛苦（总是或通常）不利于幸福和福祉。在书中，虽然我小心翼翼地承认痛苦在许多情况下对幸福有害这一明显事实，但我认为，尽管如此，它也可以具有内在价值和工具价值。我认为，各种形式的痛苦本身就可以构成善良的动机；苦难对于培养和发展坚强和脆弱的美德至关重要；苦难对于社会群体的繁荣至关重要。在本书的开头，我在没有太多推理或论证的情况下指出，痛苦最自然地用来指代消极的体验状态。然后我发展并捍卫对苦难的描述，心灵，其中心灵以一种不发生负面影响的愿望来兑现。在《作为显着扰乱的能动性的痛苦》一书中，詹妮弗·科恩斯挑战了我的假设，即痛苦最好被理解为经验性的，对我将痛苦视为一种经验性现象的说法提出了一些反对意见，并继续发展她自己的非经验性观点。毫不奇怪，我想反驳她对我的说法的批评，并对她的非经验观点提出反对意见。但通过这样做，我希望能够比我在《苦难与美德》中所做的更有力地证明苦难是经验性的。