Humanizing societies have not steadily expanded the range of morally condemned pain

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

• QUESTION: The mass-incarceration example hints at parallels with disciplinary-society literature (Foucault); worth chasing how the ‘not in the way it did in the past’ shift tracks the humanitarianism scholarship (Hunt, Pinker).