Humanizing societies do not simply expand which pains they deem unacceptable

Evidence

One might be inclined to think that at least in humanizing societies more sorts of inflicted pain come to be considered morally unacceptable with the passage of time. In some cases, however, pain-producing behavior that was once shocking no longer shocks. Or if it does, then not in the way it did in the past. Putting large numbers of people in prison for more and more kinds of offense is one example. Inflicting new forms of suffering in battle is another. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 565

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader argument about cruelty and the secular state; also parallels Foucault on the carceral and gradated penal sensibility.

Related

• Humanizing societies have not steadily expanded the range of morally condemned pain (similarity 0.95)
• Secular progress distinguished punishable gratuitous pain from necessary pain toward humanity. (similarity 0.82)
• Secular modernity distinguishes punishable gratuitous pain from necessary pain toward becoming fully human. (similarity 0.82)
• Colonial reform distinguished intolerable suffering from pain needed to realize humanity. (similarity 0.80)
• Inflicted pain can be embraced and transformed by its recipients into something else. (similarity 0.80)
• Punitive pain can be actively embraced and re-signified by its recipients (similarity 0.79)
• Liberal states rationalize torture by calibrating pain to legal necessity thresholds. (similarity 0.79)
• Torture became scandalous only once its pain was recategorized as gratuitous (similarity 0.79)
• Colonial discourse distinguished offensive suffering from redemptive, necessary pain. (similarity 0.78)