A phenomenology in practice: Agustín Serrano de Haro, Fenomenología del dolor del cuerpo Salamanca, Sígueme, 2026, 320 pp. Colección Hermeneia

Abstract

In Fenomenología del dolor del cuerpo (2026), Agustín Serrano de Haro offers a radical inquiry into the structure of painful experience from a Husserlian-inspired phenomenological perspective. Far from reducing pain to an epiphenomenon of neurophysiological processes or to a cultural construction, the author describes it as an inmanent conscious lived experience, inseparable from its first-person manifestation. The book articulates four fundamental thematic axes: 1) the painful situation as a disruption of everyday activity and attentional suction by the body; 2) a phenomenological theory of attention applied to modalities of pain (invasive, severe, carried-along, discomforts); 3) the structure of the «algic nucleus», characterized by its affective indivision, carnal makeup, and intrinsic negativity or «mal-ation»; and 4) the topology of the flesh as spacious sensitivity, culminating in an analysis of pain localization as an ontological crossroads. Through meticulous descriptions and a critical dialogue with recent literature, Serrano de Haro restores to pain its status as a primordial phenomenon, capable of revealing the most elementary structures of human corporeality, temporality, and affectivity. The work is addressed both to phenomenology specialists and to readers interested in philosophy of medicine, anthropology of the body, and ethics of suffering.