Do the Ringwraiths feel pain?

[Mirkgirl]

Step aside from the argument: What is physical and what is mental? How often is "Stress" accepted as medical cause to illness?

The Nazghul are supposed to be bodiless and thus only scattered by the water, while the real things (horses) carrying them died. Also the shape is the cloak. Frodo sees their spirit form while having the One on, but that's a metaphorical form of physical being, if that makes any sense. So physical is imho not a proper way to address anything that has to do with them.

Physical means relating to something exsistent in form of matter. In that definition no wraith could feel physical pain. As people we also feel pain from emotion, which is but also a chemical reaction. As the wraiths don't have glands either, they don't feel that either (and my excurse at the beginning was pointless. Stress is also physical, in terms of chemical reactions in the body.)

But they were able to EXIST. Not by the rules of flesh, but yet. Ánything that exists, and is aware of it, fears the possibility of not existing. And anything that is accepted as a danger to this existence is reported as danger - in terms of an unpleasant feeling, a "pain" of sorts.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Mirkgirl

Physical means relating to something exsistent in form of matter. In that definition no wraith could feel physical pain. As people we also feel pain from emotion, which is but also a chemical reaction. As the wraiths don't have glands either, they don't feel that either (and my excurse at the beginning was pointless.

Yes, but Mirkgirl, this is a setting where spirits in general definitely seem to feel emotion, so that hardly applies. Besides, you might as well ask, "how could they think, without brains?"

Look, in principle I deplore the all-purpose "it's magic" excuse some fans use– but in practice I think there is a limit to how much you can cast a supernatural story in terms of our real-world knowledge of science. You certainly can't use a totally materialist world-view, at any rate, since that won't allow for the existence of spirits at all.

Originally Posted by Mirkgirl

But they were able to EXIST. Not by the rules of flesh, but yet. Ánything that exists, and is aware of it, fears the possibility of not existing.

See? Fear is an emotion. And how do you know what the rules of, er, "not-flesh" are?

–Anyway there's another aspect to all this, too:

Originally Posted by Mirkgirl

The Nazghul are supposed to be bodiless and thus only scattered by the water, while the real things (horses) carrying them died. Also the shape is the cloak. Frodo sees their spirit form while having the One on, but that's a metaphorical form of physical being, if that makes any sense. So physical is imho not a proper way to address anything that has to do with them.

Here's a continuation of the quote given by Zil:

Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantle, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his mighty knee

.
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

Which doesn't really sound "metaphorical" to me at all. I'm not sure what a knee could be a metaphor of, are you?

This has all been discussed here before, of course... but I think the idea is that they're not fully immaterial spirits, but rather have a sort of half-life in the "wraith-world". The question of how "real" their bodies are is left ambiguous, though.