Pain

Use in the book

The Philebus account links bodily pains with the dissolution of natural harmony and distinguishes the distress produced by anticipating them. The Hermetic account says that pain supplies sharper pangs and sufferings. In the description of bodily habituation, ponoi are exertions to which a body becomes accustomed, rather than necessarily injuries or emotional grief.

Places to read

1. I.47.13.1Disruption of the natural constitution produces pains.
2. I.47.13.4Anticipation produces distress in soul.
3. I.41.6.17Pain is related to sharper pangs and sufferings.
4. I.47.7.2Bodies become accustomed to exertion.

Translation in this edition

The English follows the kind of experience meant. “Exertion” avoids giving every occurrence of ponos the same meaning as lypē.

Use in the book

In I.91 the speaker asks for a love no threat, torment, or attraction could divide from God. The comparison attributed to Anselm places even the pains of hell below the evil of sinning against the beloved. Its force is comparative and devotional: love seeks constancy under the most extreme conceivable trial.

The prayer then turns to sun, flame, sea, and altar as images of inexhaustible affection. Pain is not sought as a good in itself; it is the imagined pressure through which the desired firmness of love is expressed.

Places to read

1. I.91The preference attributed to Anselm makes extreme suffering a measure of desired fidelity.

In this edition

This is a prayerful wish framed through a received comparison, not an instruction to inflict or seek suffering.

Use in the book

Theophrastus reports pain from opposites, in contrast with pleasure from likes. Aëtius explains the opposition through composition: differing assemblies and elemental blends are alien to one another, and alien material produces distresses and pains. This account links felt discomfort to incompatibility between bodily constituents.

The criticism hinges on painful perception. If perceiving works by likeness yet may itself hurt, pain cannot simply be excluded from encounters with the like. Theophrastus cites Anaxagoras's stronger claim that every perception involves pain, but that rival position is not Empedocles' doctrine or necessarily the critic's own unqualified conclusion. At §23 the supposed link between unlikeness and both ignorance and pain becomes a further unwanted consequence. These argumentative uses preserve a distinction between actual discomfort, the proposed physical conditions causing it, and an opponent's attempt to show that those conditions are insufficiently discriminating.

Places to read

1. A 86 § 9 (testimony)Theophrastus, On the Senses 9. Assigns pain to opposites.
2. A 86 §§ 16–17 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 17. Uses painful perception and an Anaxagorean contrast to challenge the account.
3. A 86 §§ 22–23 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 23. Argues that ignorance would always have to be painful.
4. A 95 (testimony)Aëtius. Reports pain and disturbance from alien composition and blending.

Translation in this edition

The last words of A95’s second notice, “pains out of what is alien,” are supplied by Diels. They support the edition's restored contrast but should not be cited as unqualified manuscript wording.