Pain is bad. It’s unpleasant to trip over and hurt your knees or be heartbroken by a breakup. These experiences are bad, and everyone would agree. But, there are disagreements among thinkers on the question of why pain is bad. The simplest answer comes from dolorists. Dolorism is a philosophical theory that is parallel to hedonism, which theorizes about well-being. Dolorism specifically addresses the concept of ill-being, identifying pain as intrinsically bad; pain contributes to ill-being not merely because it lacks pleasure, but because it inherently embodies unpleasantness in a robust sense. According to dolorism, the explanation of badness of pain is exhausted by its unpleasant phenomenal character alone. It suggests that the negative tone of pain itself is sufficient to make pain bad, independent of any external circumstances or subjective attitudes. Another answer comes from proponents of what I call the attitude theory. This theory encompasses all views that consider an attitude—whether a pro- or con-attitude—as the sole explanans of the badness of pain. Heathwood, for example, defends the idea that sensory pleasure is …