On the Ethics of Torture

Uwe Steinhoff

Description

The question of when, and under what circumstances, the practice of torture might be justified has received a great deal of attention in the last decade in both academia and in the popular media. Many of these discussions are, however, one-sided with other perspectives either ignored or quickly dismissed with minimal argument. In On the Ethics of Torture, Uwe Steinhoff provides a complete account of the philosophical debate surrounding this highly contentious subject. Steinhoff's position is that torture is sometimes, under certain narrowly circumscribed conditions, justified, basing his argument on the right to self-defense. His position differs from that of other authors who, using other philosophical justifications, would permit torture under a wider set of conditions. After having given the reader a thorough account of the main arguments for permitting torture under certain circumstances, Steinhoff explains and addresses the many objections that have been raised to employing torture under any circumstances. This is an indispensible work for anyone interested in one of the most controversial subjects of our times.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. What Is Torture?

2. The Moral Justification of Torture

The Argument from Self-defense
What Is Self-defense?
Proportionality, or: Many Forms of Torture
Are Not as Bad as Killing
The Argument from the Culpability for Creating a Forced-Choice Situation
The Argument from Necessity
Reminder: The Justification of Torture Is Compatible with Rights Absolutism
The Utilitarian Argument

3. Defusing the Ticking-Social-Bomb Argument: Against Consequentialist Attempts to Undermine the Right to Self-defensive Torture

4. Against the Institutionalization of Torture

5. Legalizing Torture?

6. Objections

Attempts to Quickly Dismiss the Argument from Self-defense and Other Rights-based Arguments
The Defenselessness Argument
But Is It Really Self-defense? Whitley Kaufman and Daniel Hill
David Sussman’s Complicity Argument
Kant’s Categorical Imperative: The Three Kantian Formulas
“Breaking the Will” (and “Dignity,” “Subject Status,” and “Self-legislative Rulership”)
Torture and the Doctrine of Double Effect
Is the Ticking-Bomb Example Unrealistic?
“Torture Knows No Limits”

7. Is Justifying Torture Bad Even If Torture Is Sometimes Justified?

Conclusions
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie politique
• Éthique et morale
• Ethique et morale
• Guerrilla warfare
• Human rights
• Terrorism
• Civil Rights

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 08 avril 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438446233
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

On the Ethics of Torture
UWE STEINHOFF

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 Uwe Steinhoff
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Steinhoff, Uwe.
On the ethics of torture / Uwe Steinhoff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4621-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Torture—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
HV8593.S74 2013
172'.2—dc23
2012017559
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my nieces, Jeanette and Gina
Preface
After having written two articles in which I argued that torture is justifiable in certain narrowly circumscribed circumstances, in particular in certain self-defense situations, I felt no inclination to write anything more on the topic. Then, however, Paul Theodoulou, editor of Global Dialogue , asked me whether I would like to write a piece on torture for his journal. I thought, fine, one last piece; all good things come in threes. So I read up on the literature on torture that had appeared since I had last written on it and came across lines like this, brought to paper by an absolutist opponent of torture: “I also found myself increasingly annoyed that—doubtless inadvertently—careless philosophizing about imaginary ticking bomb scenarios had given their [he means authors like me, who defend torture in certain circumstances] argument a starting-point which should never have been conceded” ( Brecher 2008, 3 ).
The annoyance immediately became mutual, as it were, and resulted in this book. I am annoyed by the careless philosophizing that Brecher and many other absolutist torture opponents engage in. What particularly annoys me is the practice of many, if not all, of them to keep throwing stones while living in the glass house. For example, they collectively claim (and some of them make all of these claims at once) that absolutist torture opponents do not “immerse themselves into the empirical details,” “do not know the psychological and medical literature on torture,” “ignore the historical facts,” “draw conclusions from idealized cases to completely dissimilar ones,” “undermine rights with consequentialist fantasies,” “commit intellectual fraud,” and so on. In fact, however, it is they who commit these mistakes and many more, so this book will turn the tables on them.
Before going in medias res , however, let me make two points very clear. First, this is certainly not a “ pro -torture” book. Most people think that killing in self-defense is justified under certain circumstances. However, this does not make them “proponents of killing”; they do not think that the world would be a better place with more killing. In the same vein, I am against torture in almost all circumstances. Hence this book is not pro -torture but is in favor of the right to self-defense (and, independent of this right, in favor of a liberty to produce an evil in order to prevent a very much larger one from happening, provided there are no other reasonable means). It is, thus, in favor of morality and rationality.
Second, my interest in the topic of torture was aroused by the German Daschner case, that is, by a child-kidnapping case, not by the “terrorist threat” the American debate is obsessed with. In particular, this book is not in the least intended to support “the war on terrorism” and the silly and often racist “us-versus-them” ideology that accompanies it. i simply do not belong to that camp. Thus, I would like to make clear that if, let's say, torturing an Islamic terrorist is justified to avert the explosion of a ticking bomb that would kill thousands of innocent Americans or Israelis, it then is obviously also justified to torture a Christian or Jewish state terrorist if by doing so one can avert a more or less indiscriminate bombing campaign by the American or Israeli air force that would (once again) kill thousands of innocent Palestinians, Iraqis, or Afghans. Thus, I prefer moral universalism to double standards. In this regard, at least, I am united with the absolutist opponents of torture that I will be criticizing in this book.
Acknowledgments
Chapters 1 and 7 and sections 2.1.1 – 2.1.2 draw on material originally published as “Justifying Defensive Torture,” in Torture: Moral Absolutes and Ambiguities , ed. Bev Clucas, Gerry Johnstone, and Tony Ward (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), pp. 39–60. Chapter 3 and the beginning of section 6.8 use slightly revised material from “Defusing the Ticking Social Bomb Argument: The Right to Self-Defensive Torture,” Global Dialogue 12(1) (2010). Likewise, slightly revised material from “Torture Can Be Self-Defense: A Critique of Whitley Kaufman,” Ethics and International Affairs 22(1) (2008) (online only) forms part of section 6.3 . Revised parts of “Torture: The Case for Dirty Harry and against Alan Dershowitz,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 23 (2006), pp. 337–53, appear in particular in sections 2.1 , 4 , 6.2 , and 6.4 . Chapter 5 is a slightly revised version of “Legalizing Defensive Torture,” Public Affairs Quarterly 26 (2012), pp. 19–32.
The research presented in this book was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. HKU 752710). I am very grateful for this support.
I also thank the participants of the conference Torture and Terror at the University of Hull in November 2007 for comments on some of my thoughts on torture. Last but not least, I owe special thanks to Volker Erb and Gerhard Beestermöller for enormously helpful written comments on a first draft of this book.
Introduction
Is torture sometimes justified? This book answers, “Yes,” and it will defend this answer against a host of objections. In doing so, it will provide the reader with a detailed and comprehensive overview of the current philosophical debate on torture. Moreover, this means that the book must also deal with topics of wider ethical (and sometimes legal) significance, namely, topics such as self-defense, rights-based morality, absolutism, consequentialism, Kantianism, human dignity, coercion, and freedom of the will. Since some of the analyses provided here contradict certain widely held (but, as will be shown, not necessarily warranted) assumptions, the relevance of this study goes well beyond the confines of the torture debate.
Chapter 1 will offer and defend a definition of torture. However, even if one does not accept this particular definition, this will not affect the ethical arguments of the later chapters.
Chapter 2 presents four different justifications of torture. The first two justifications, self-defense and the argument from the culpability for creating a forced choice situation, are purely rights-based arguments; the third justification, necessity, presupposes rights but combines this with consequentialist considerations, resulting in a “threshold-deontological” account. The fourth justification is utilitarian. I endorse the first three justifications but not the fourth.
Section 2.1 deals with the argument from self-defense. I will argue that there is something like self-defensive torture (which can include the defense of others) and that such torture is morally justified if certain general requirements for the justifiability of self-defensive violence/force are met. These requirements come under the headings of imminence, necessity, and proportionality.
In section 2.1.1 I will briefly discuss the English, American, and especially German legal regulations regarding self-defense. I will argue that the same moral reasoning that underlies these laws is also applicable to torture cases and that the necessity and the imminence requirements can be met in some torture cases.
In section 2.1.2 I will turn to the proportionality requirement and in that context discuss arguments that attempt to show that torture is worse than killing. I will argue that these arguments cannot hold water. Many forms of torture are definitely not worse than killing. In fact, I will show that there are cases where self-defensive torture is the morally preferable and more humane alternative to self-defensive killing. Moreover, I will also show that even if this were not the case, torturing a culpable aggressor in order to save his innocent victim from being further tortured by him can still be justified, for torture is not worse than torture. I conclude that if self-defensive killing is justified in some cases—and it is—then self-defensive torture is also justified in some cases.
In section 2.2 I discuss another rights-based argument, the argument from the culpability for creating a forced choice situation. Even if the self-defense argument, as some authors (mistakenly) argue, were not applicable to the child-kidnapping case or the ticking-bomb case, this argument still is, is intuitively compelling, and works just fine.
Section 2.3 discusses the necessity argument. This argument is not, as is so often erroneously claimed, a straightforward consequentialist argument, but one that combines consequentialism with deontology. While the first two arguments cannot be used to justify torturing innocent bystanders, this argument can under certain extreme conditions. However, contrary to its detractors, this is not a damning verdict on this justification. On the contrary, the fact that deontological antitorture absolutism prohibits torturing innocent bystanders under all circumstances is