Progress discourse divides suffering into punishable gratuitous pain and necessary pain

Evidence

Clearly, then, in the cause of secular progress there was suffering and suffering. What is interesting, I think, is not merely that some forms of suffering were to be taken more seriously than others, but that “inhuman” suffering as opposed to “necessary” or “inevitable” suffering was regarded as being essentially gratuitous, and therefore legally punishable. Pain endured in the movement toward becoming “fully human,” on the other hand, was necessary, in the sense that there were social or moral reasons why it had to be suffered. This view is of a piece with the post-Enlightenment concern to construct through judicial punishment the most efficient means of reforming offenders and of guarding society’s interests. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 549 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Suffering becomes unbearable only once a better alternative is conceivable — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1068; Enlightened progress remains entangled with domination and cruelty — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 200; Secular and pre-scripted tragedy offer irreconcilable relations to pain (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Secular progress distinguished punishable gratuitous pain from necessary pain toward humanity. #corroborates (0.97) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 549
• Secular modernity distinguishes punishable gratuitous pain from necessary pain toward becoming fully human. #corroborates (0.95)