Product Description

This timely and passionate book is the first to address itself to Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s controversial arguments for the limited use of interrogational torture and its legalisation.

• Argues that the respectability Dershowitz′s arguments confer on the view that torture is a legitimate weapon in the war on terror needs urgently to be countered
  
• Takes on the advocates of torture on their own utilitarian grounds
  
• Timely and passionately written, in an accessible, jargon–free style
  
• Forms part of the provocative and timely Blackwell Public Philosophy series

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #192146 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 136 pages

Review
"Brecher relentlessly deconstructs the most misleading hypothetical of our time. His lively and valuable book shows that even ′noble cause′ torture is always counterproductive."
Geoffrey Robertson QC, Doughty Street Chambers

"(Dershowitz′s) premise is subjected to a withering scrutiny in this brilliant deconstruction by the moral philosopher Bob Brecher. In a comprehensive critique of the ′ticking bomb′ hypothesis, Brecher exposes the moral and intellectual flaws in Dershowitz′s arguments and shows how easily such pragmatic rationalisations can open the door to the creation of a ′tortuous society′. It′s a task that Brecher accomplishes with grace, moral passion and unswerving logic."
Red Pepper, March 2008

"Quite simply, this book is the most powerful and comprehensive challenge available to a piece of intellectual fraud having wide commerce today – that under some hypothetical situation the infliction of pain to break another’s will is morally justifiable. The ticking bomb, in Brecher’s analysis, is a fantasy that hardly yields grounds sufficient for the employment of interrogational torture. Here the philosopher’s role towards that fantasy is quite clear: debunk it!"
Gabriel Palmer–Fernandez, Youngstown State University

"A splendid attack on the appalling idea of legalising torture."
Will Podmore

“A salutary antidote to those who would waver on the issue [of torture]…Brecher opens up the wider utilitarian implications that arise.”
Planet Magazine

“Brecher … does not reflexively dismiss the advocates of torture … .He carefully cites the errors of their arguments, using logic, expert opinion, and moral reasoning.”
PsycCritiques

From the Back Cover
Do you really think torture is acceptable in any circumstances?

The controversial arguments of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz supporting the legalisation of torture in so–called “ticking bomb” scenarios represent the most sophisticated and visible of recent attempts to make torture an accepted weapon in the war on terror.

States and other agents engage in torture, as both sides of the debate accept. According to Bob Brecher, it is precisely because the general public are taking the “new realism” of Dershowitz and others seriously that there is a pressing need to expose the fundamental flaws in their arguments, lest the peoples of democratic societies lose their moral compass and fail to be vigilant in holding their governments properly to account.

This timely and passionate book is the first to address itself directly to the arguments for legalising the limited use of interrogational torture. Brecher confronts those arguments head–on, examining the efficacy of torture and drawing out the practical implications for policy as well as the ethical implications of these proposals for the kind of society we live in.

About the Author
Bob Brecher is Reader in Moral Philosophy at the University of Brighton, UK and Director of its Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics. He is the author of two previous books, Anselm′s Argument: the Logic of Divine Existence and Getting What You Want?: a Critique of Liberal Morality (1998). He has published widely in ethics and social and political philosophy and was the founding editor of the journal Res Publica.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant demolition of the argument for torture
Bob Brecher, Reader in Moral Philosophy in the School of Historical and Critical Studies, the University of Brighton, has written a splendid attack on the appalling idea of legalising torture. The American civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz proposed introducing a torture warrant, giving intellectual respectability to the practice of torture. He suggested that torture would be justified if it forced a terrorist to divulge the location of a ticking bomb.

But the ticking bomb scenario is incoherent. The more the urgency, the less the chance of getting the warrant in time. So, in practice, the legalisation, not the torture, would not happen. There are no examples of this scenario in reality. Yet torture's apologists cynically use the scenario to justify mass systematic torture.

However, Dershowitz's rule-utilitarianism does not lead towards the conclusion he wants. The presumed utilitarian argument that torture would save lives does not work. All experience shows that legalising the torture of suspects increases not diminishes terrorist bombings. For utilitarianism, what makes torture wrong is the total of all its consequences, including the unacceptable wider social consequences of instituting torture. Every moral code, including utilitarianism, condemns torture.

Yet interrogational torture is practised in all counter-insurgency wars, by the British in Malaya, Kenya and Northern Ireland, the USA in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the Israelis in the Occupied Territories. Zvi Aharoni, head of interrogation in the Israeli security service in the 1950s, said in 1997, "Let me tell you one thing, when I was head of the interrogation department, nobody could touch a prisoner. Sure, you could do all kinds of tricks, you could bug them, listen in on their conversation. But beating them? Torturing them? And today not only is it being done, it's legal, Arabs can be tortured. It's legal and in my country."

Brecher writes, "The proposal to legalize interrogational torture is so appalling because - for all that it is presented as a radical challenge - it in fact serves to justify what we are doing." And it doesn't even work. US Field Manual 34-52, the rulebook for US military interrogators, "prohibits the use of coercive techniques because they produce low quality intelligence."

Brecher sums up, "In the case of torture, though, inaction is right. The very occasional catastrophe (and remember that legalizing interrogational torture might, just possibly, prevent only a tiny fraction even of real terrorist actions) is a price we have to pay to avoid creating a torturous society. We need to do what we can to eliminate the conditions which give rise to bombs, ticking or not. If we fail, then it is too late." Occasional catastrophes "really are unavoidable on pain of the greater catastrophe of a torturous society."