Responds to comments by Nicholas Gane & by John Scott on this author's article 'Towards an Emotionally Conscious Social Theory' (all, 2005). While the ongoing debate over the future of social theory is heartening, it is striking nonetheless that neither Gane nor Scott engaged with the empirical evidence put forth in the article: the matter of emotional pain & its social outcomes. The charges of insufficient debt granted to classical social theorists despite their relative indifference to the sociology of emotions are addressed, & the central points of the essay are reiterated. Emotions are indeed both emotional & biological, but these two dimensions intersect within each human body. In a society fraught with pain, that which...