Law is coercion that authorizes pain and defines the human

Evidence

The judicial process is an institution integral to every kind of state, and it is always based on coercion. In order to understand “secularism” I therefore did not begin with an a priori definition of that concept (“the universal principles of freedom and toleration” or “a particular cultural import from the West”). I tried to look at aspects of shari¯‘a reform as both the precondition and the consequence of secular processes of power. For the law always facilitates or obstructs different forms of life by force, responds to different kinds of sensibility, and authorizes different patterns of pain and suffering. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1234 (#expands, via linked claim)

If the motive of a crime is the advantage expected of it, the effectiveness of the penalty is the disadvantage expected of it. This means that the ‘pain’ at the heart of punishment is not the actual sensation of pain, but the idea of pain, displeasure, inconvenience – the ‘pain’ of the idea of ‘pain’. Punishment has to make use not of the body, but of representation. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 155 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Yet it is my argument that the Islamic intellectual debates over the nature of law continue to have heuristic relevance to modern thinking about modern law’s performativity as a coercive mechanism producing an externalized subject, rather than one that presupposes an individual who is operating with internal moral restraints constituted by the systematic workings of ethical technologies of the self. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 513 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Illegality transforms the physical anguish of abortion into moral punishment for women — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1430; Law always operates through coercion and authorizes particular patterns of pain — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1234; Modern societies legally condone inflicting pain in many sanctioned domains (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Law always operates through coercion and authorizes particular patterns of pain #expands (0.95) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1234
• Penalty operates through the idea of pain, not pain itself #complicates (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 155
• Legal systems differ on whether they externalize coercion or presume internal moral restraint #complicates (0.74) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 513