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The Kantian Case Against Torture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

Peter Brian Barry
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Abstract

There is a decided consensus that Kantian ethics yields an absolutist case against torture – that torture is morally wrong and absolutely so. I argue that while there is a Kantian case against torture, Kantian ethics does not clearly entail absolutism about torture. I consider several arguments for a Kantian absolutist position concerning torture and explain why none are sound. I close by clarifying just what the Kantian case against torture is. My contention is that while Kantian ethics does not support a variety of moral absolutism about torture, it does suggest a strong version of legal absolutism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 90 , Issue 4 , October 2015 , pp. 593 - 621
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2015 

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References

1 All other rights are subject to the needs of states. See Almond, Brenda, ‘Rights’ in A Companion to Ethics, Singer, Peter, ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 266 Google Scholar.

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3 H.C. 5100/94 Public Committee against Torture in Israel and Others v. The State of Israel, The General Security Services and Other, 53 (4) PD 817 (1999), paragraph 23.

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16 It remains an open question whether the relevant prohibition is strongly or weakly absolute. For a moral prohibition to be strongly absolute, it must be both biding across possible worlds and always be of greater normative importance than any competing moral requirements. Weakly absolute prohibitions are similarly binding across possible worlds, but they can conflict with other similarly important moral requirements. For discussion, see Kramer, Matthew, Torture and Moral Integrity: A Philosophical Inquiry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 8–9 Google Scholar.

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23 Ibid., 34 and 54–5.

24 Ibid., 27, 49, and 56.

25 Ibid., 35.

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30 Ibid.

31 Ibid., 169.

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44 Sussman, ‘What's Wrong With Torture?’, 4.

45 Wisnewski, Understanding Torture, 73.

46 Ibid., 82.

47 Wisnewski, Understanding Torture, 88.

48 Sussman suggests without endorsing this argument in ‘What's Wrong with Torture?’, 13–4.

49 See, for example, Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)Google Scholar and Scanlon, Thomas, The Importance of What We Owe To Each Other (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

50 Kamm, Ethics for Enemies, 17.

51 In the remainder of this paragraph, I have been guided by Hill's, Thomas ‘Wrongdoing, Desert, and Punishment’ reprinted in his Human Welfare and Moral Worth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 310–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Ibid., 338. Wisnewski and Emerick invoke a potential counter-example here involving an escaped slave who does not accept being beaten and returned to his master when he chooses to escape, even if he chooses knowing that he will be beaten and enslaved again if caught. See Wisnewski and Emerick, The Ethics of Torture, 74–5. But a slave surely does not have a fair share of what justice requires.

53 Christine Korsgaard, ‘The Right to Lie: Kant on Dealing with Evil’, 133–58.

54 Ibid., 153.

55 Ibid., 151.

56 See Casebeer, ‘Torture Interrogation of Terrorists’, 268; Kleinig, ‘Ticking Bombs and Torture Warrants’, 620; Luban, ‘Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb’, 1445–52; Wisnewski, Understanding Torture, 195–7; Wolfendale, Jessica, ‘Training Torturers: A Critique of the “Ticking Bomb” Argument’, Social Theory & Practice 32 (2006), 269–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 While some commentators hold that our indirect duties to animals are derived from direct imperfect duties owed to others, Kant is clear that the duty to refrain from cruelty ‘is always only a duty of the human being to himself’ (MM, 443).

58 Altman, Matthew C., Kant and Applied Ethics: The Uses and Limits of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 19 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 Arguably, Kant's multiple retributivist remarks should not be understood as fundamental moral principles, but instead function as components of a complicated theory of legal punishment that combines retributive policies with concerns about deterrence. For discussion, see Byrd, Sharon, ‘Kant's Theory of Punishment: Deterrence in its Threat, Retribution in its Execution’, Law and Philosophy 8 (1989), 151–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Altman, Kant and Applied Ethics, 125.

61 I do not mean to argue that Kantian skepticism about determining moral worth undermines the need for legal punishment generally. We may well know a posteriori that we need legal punishment in practice – Kant never doubts that – even if we do not know whether we need punitive torture.

62 For further discussion, see my ‘Fantasy, Conceivability, and Ticking Bombs’, Public Affairs Quarterly 27:3 (2013), 87–110 Google Scholar. Footnote omitted for consideration.

63 Richard Posner, ‘Torture, Terrorism, and Interrogation’, in Torture: A Collection, 296.

64 Oren Gross, ‘The Prohibition on Torture and the Limits of Law’, in Torture: A Collection, 241.

65 Steinhoff, On the Ethics of Torture, 109.

66 Ibid., 134. Even if this were so, it wouldn't follow that a third party – say, the police officer who threatens the kidnapper of a child – could rightly torture in defense of that child. While the unjustly attacked victim might owe his attacker nothing, third-party agents still might: recall that on a popular if controversial interpretation of Kant, I am not even allowed to lie to the axe murderer in defense of another person.

67 Herman, Barbara, ‘Murder and Mayhem’, in her The Practice of Moral Judgment, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 130 Google Scholar.

68 Waldron, Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs, 255.

69 Pallikkathayil, ‘Rethinking the Formula of Humanity’, 117.