ON TORTURE

This paper will systematically investigate different positions taken on the moral permissibility of torture, to reveal that torture is not to be accepted or justified under any circumstance.

In order to effectively address the matter, we ought to come to definitional terms with “torture”, despite the lack of unanimity and the spread of contextual usage of the term. For the scope of this paper, the term “torture” will be adopted to refer to any act by which mental or physical pain is inflicted on a person as punishment for an accused act, or coercion as a means to acquire confessions or information.
In defense of the argument for the absolute prohibition of torture the understanding of the phenomenology of torture is pivotal;
A key to understanding this decline of interrogation into violence is through a communicative model developed by Jurgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action, 1981) that goes into the restrictions of “strategic” conversation that is based on manipulation as opposed to reasonability and expression that are found in “communicative” structures. The former “strategic” model adopted by interrogators makes it nearly impossible for them to assert any truthfulness, which is what they are required to do, and hence the jump to the use of force for acquiring truthful information becomes the only possible way. In addition, the more the interrogatee withholds vital information the more he/she is viewed to be inhumane therefore acts of torture, of escalating degrees, become justified in view of the interrogator.
It is to be concluded that the economic model does not make a good case for the moral permissibility of torture. Also in our analysis of the “strategic” model that restricts both the interrogator and interrogatee, violence will be a viable option. However, if that option is resorted to, there are detrimental prolonged and immediate effects on the human being tortured. Therefore, the wrongness of torture is not be underestimated and that there are no conditions under which torture could be viewed as being morally