Jeremy Bentham—the great-grandfather of modern utilitarian thought—offers
a useful jolt to normal opinion in his claim that pain, far from constituting merely an unwelcome occasion to race for the medicine cabinet, holds sway over individual lives much as a sovereign power governs a state. Pain, that is, rules us not only when it appears in full regalia, displaying its power like a king at a banquet, but also when it remains behind the scenes, more or less invisible, its pres...