EN
The article concerns the relationship between heroic patterns of culture and anesthesia and its consequences. The considerations are focused on the well-known maxim suffering ennobles. Basing herself on the work of W. Sofsky and D. LaCapra, the author shows that the reverse of heroism is a depreciation of the direct testimony of the suffering. Discourse on suffering has the nature of rationalization, serving to maintain a distance from suffering. The form of this discourse assumes both the exclusion of the suffering and the appropriation of their personal position. Such discourse is based on anti-eudaimonism and the “hidden rule” that defines suffering as a deviation from normality. This justifies both the exclusion of the suffering and of claims addressed to them. These claims involve phantasms of heroicity and an aesthetics of the sublime: those afflicted by suffering should accept their condition exactly as defined by the heroic paradigm.