Pandora's box

‘Whatever one might have to say about torture, there appear to be moral reasons for not saying it’. This striking claim introduces Henry Shue's influential essay, first published in 1978, on ‘Torture’. Just as bad press is better than no press at all, even to condemn torture is to draw attention to it, to dignify it, to imply that it falls within the bounds of moral discourse. This is, as Shue pointed out, a variation of the argument that one must never open Pandora's box of evil spirits. Nevertheless, ‘Pandora's box is open’— opened most conspicuously, and with unimpeachable moral authority, by Amnesty International with its Report on Torture (1975).

Here is Shue's unadorned summary of the report: ‘scores of governments are now using some torture— including governments that are widely viewed as fairly civilized— and a number of governments are heavily dependent upon torture for their very survival’. In the years since, many governments still use torture, which is to say, they deliberately inflict pain on individuals in their custody. Some governments have abandoned the practice, some did not survive, some have started the practice. That the government of the United States now engages in activities that seem like torture to many observers has attracted an enormous amount of attention. For the most part, observers condemn torture on moral and legal grounds. Governments rarely justify its practice or even admit to engaging in it, both because most government officials would prefer to avoid public condemnation and because international law, in the form of a widely ratified multilateral convention, requires that states treat torture as a criminal offence subject to extradition.

In short, torture is an institutionalized practice in today's world. There are rules against torture, yet the practice continues, apparently unabated. It seems then that public discussion of torture is entirely warranted because the rules do not work and they should be made to work. Furthermore, most observers believe that discussion reinforces the widely shared conviction that torture joins slavery and genocide as the most egregious violations of human rights that we know. To suggest, however, that there are rules for torture— rules that people involved with torture make, follow, ignore and change— at least some observers might regard as morally dubious because it cloaks an unmitigated evil in the legitimating language of rules.