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33 Phil. & Pub. Aff. 1 (2005)
What's Wrong with Torture?

handle is hein.journals/philadp33 and id is 1 raw text is: DAVID SUSSMAN What's Wrong with Torture? Why is torture morally wrong? This question has been neglected or avoided by recent moral philosophy, in part because torture is by its nature especially difficult to discuss. Torture involves degrees of pain and fear that are often said to be utterly indescribable; indeed, these experi- ences are sometimes said to destroy in their victims the very hope of any sort of communication or shared experience whatsoever.1 Torture has proved surprisingly difficult to define.2 There is no clear agreement on the distinction between torture, coercion, and manipulation, or whether such techniques as sleep and sensory deprivation, isolation, or prolonged questioning should count as forms of torture.3 In addition, we may be fearful of deriving some sort of perverse titillation from the subject, or of being able to dispassionately contemplate the agonies of real victims of torture. Those who have not suffered torture may well feel Earlier versions of this article were presented at the University of Toronto, the Univer- sity Center for Ethics and the Professions, Harvard University, and the Philamore Ethics group. I am grateful to Kate Abramson, Arthur Applbaum, Marcia Baron, Elizabeth Harman, Simon Keller, Christine Korsgaard, Rahul Kumar, Margaret Little, Dick Moran, Henry Richardson, Arthur Ripstein and Dennis Thompson for helpful comments and sug- gestions. I am also grateful for fellowship support from the University Center for Ethics and the Professions, Harvard University, during the preparation of this article. 1. See, e.g., Jean Amery, Torture in Art From the Ashes, ed. Lawrence L. Langer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 130-31; Diana Kordon et al., Torture in Argentina in Torture and its Consequences, ed. Metin Basoglu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 443-44; Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 34-38. 2. See Edward Peters, Torture (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 154. 3. Donald Rumsfeld insists that what the prisoners at Abu Ghraib suffered was not technically torture but only abuse, and the European Court of Human Rights has con- cluded that while Great Britain had subjected suspected IRA sympathizers to inhuman and degrading treatment, what they suffered was nevertheless not quite torture. In neither case, however, was it made clear just what the relevant distinction was supposed to be (see n.15 below). © 2005 by Blackwell Publishing, Inc. Philosophy & Public Affairs 33, no. 1

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