Torture, Inhumanity, and life Incoherence

Abstract

The paper argues that torture can never be justified by appeal to the sanctity of innocent life its supporters invoke to justify it, precisely because it is destructive of that which makes life sacred and valuable, at the individual level, for both torturer and torture victim, and at the level of the social institutions within which good lives may be led. In sum, to torture and to be tortured are the ultimate degradation and destruction of that which makes human life uniquely valuable. That which makes it uniquely valuable is not mere biological functioning, but the capacity to care for principles, people, creatures, and futures beyond the limits of our own skins. That capacity is what one might call—without positing the existence of any metaphysical or transcendent spiritual substance—the soul of human beings, which, if lost, causes the loss of our humanity. Torture, for both victim and perpetrator, is soul-destroying. Any society that actively cultivates torturers and employs information obtained by their work has abandoned any claim to adhering to a value system rooted in the recognition of the sanctity of human life.