Is Torture Okay?
Where We Are
For class 10.1, we read Alan Dershowitz's argument that torture should be legal and regulated, even though it is bad (or perhaps even always wrong). For our next two classes on torture, we turn to an article by Uwe Steinhoff, who takes exactly the reverse view. Steinhoff thinks that torture can be morally permissible in some situations, and in fact that these situations are not terribly rare, but that it should nevertheless be illegal.
Uwe Steinhoff
Uwe Steinhoff is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. He has published mostly about just war theory - you may remember him being mentioned by Helen Frowe. But he has also written about self-defense more generally and has a controversial and combative book about the ethics of torture. You may find his tone in our reading for this class combative as well - I do not recommend that you try to write like he does. We are reading it for this class because of the issues that it raises, including how they contrast with Dershowitz and how they set up later topics in the course, not because he is a writer who I believe you should try to emulate.
Is Torture Okay?
Steinhoff's article, which you may find here, argues for two theses: that torture is sometimes - indeed, often - morally permissible, and that it should nevertheless be illegal. The article is a little bit on the longer side and is full of arguments, so we're going to split it into two chunks. For today's class, we'll focus on Steinhoff's arguments that torture is sometimes morally permissible, and for class 11.1 we will turn to his response to Dershowitz. The transition between the two parts of Steinhoff's argument is in the middle of page 346, about halfway through the paper. So please read (at least) through page 346 for today's class.
Torture vs. Killing
The common thread through the arguments in the first half of Steinhoff's article is his idea that torture is not at bad as death. Since it is not as bad as death, and it is sometimes morally okay to kill someone, it follows that it should not be surprising if it turns out to sometimes be okay to torture someone. This basic thought behind his argument comes back in several different forms at different points in the discussion.
Tickle Torture