Secular progress distinguished punishable gratuitous pain from necessary pain toward humanity.

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad’s key definitional distinction: secularism classifies suffering by whether it serves ‘progress toward full humanity,’ which legitimates the state’s own inflictions while criminalizing others’.