Stoics on pain

Brennan describes the Stoic conception of pain as one of the four basic kinds of emotion:

Pain is an opinion that some present thing is a bad of such a sort that we should be downcast about it.
[Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, p.270]

More Augustine on privation

From Against the Epistle of Manichaeus

For who can doubt that the whole of that which is called evil is nothing else than
corruption? Different evils may, indeed, be called by different names; but that which
is the evil of all things in which any evil is perceptible is corruption. So the corruption
of the educated mind is ignorance: the corruption of the prudent mind is imprudence;
the corruption of the just mind, injustice; the corruption of the brave mind, cowardice;
the corruption of a calm, peaceful mind, cupidity, fear, sorrow, pride. Again, in a
living body the corruption of health is pain and disease; the corruption of strength is
exhaustion; the corruption of rest is toil. Again, in any corporeal thing, the corruption
of beauty is ugliness; the corruption of straightness is crookedness; the corruption of
order is confusion; the corruption of entireness is disseverance, or fracture, or
diminution. . . . Enough has been said to show that corruption does harm only by
displacing the natural condition; and so, corruption is not nature, but against nature.
And if corruption is the only evil to be found anywhere, and if corruption is not
nature, no nature is evil.

On the Nature of Good

“Nature therefore which has been corrupted, is called evil, for assuredly when incorrupt it is good; but even when corrupt, so far as it is nature it is good, so far as it is corrupted it is evil.” 4

The heart of torture

No debate about whether something counts as torture should ignore this passage from Orwell's 1984.

"By itself," he said, "pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable --something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be disobeyed. It is the same with the rats. For you, they are unendurable. They are a form of pressure that you cannot withstand, even if you wish to. You will do what is required of you." [284]

Expressing suffering

Virginia Woolf:

English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear has no words for the shiver or the headache....The merest schoolgirl when she falls in love has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her, but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry. [On Being Ill, p.194]

Hobbes on pain

Hobbes on pain:

Of pleasure, or delights, some arise from the sense of an object present; and those may be called pleasures of sense....Of this kind are onerations and exonerations of the body; as also all that is pleasant, in the sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch; others arise from the expectation, that proceeds from foresight of the end, or consequence of things; whether those things in the sense please or displease: and these are pleasures of the mind of him that draweth those consequences and are generally called JOY. In the like manner, displeasures, are some in the sense, and called PAIN; others, in the expectation of consequences, and are called GRIEF. [Leviathan I, VI, 12]

also

This endeavour, when it is toward something which causes it is called APPETITE, or DESIRE; the latter, being the general name; and the other oftentimes restrained to signify the desire of food....And when the endeavour is fromward something it is generally called AVERSION. [Leviathan, I, VI, 2]