Toward a Political Ethics of Torture

Abstract

The current torture ethics debate comprises a dispute about the moral status of torture and a parallel dispute about the right way to do ethics. The first dispute receives much attention, while the the second dispute is obscured or even suppressed. As a result, scholars have developed highly idiosyncratic approaches to torture ethics that cannot be meaningfully compared. These moral evaluations of torture rest on contrary assumptions about the definition of torture, the right way to do ethics, and the facts of the situation, and therefore they are not really answers to the same moral question. I respond to this dilemma by analyzing torture ethics as a social rather than ethical problem. I use Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to reimagine two things: what kind of conceptual object torture is, and the structure of the social group that is considering torture. This approach puts disagreeable actors on equal footing, based on their real associations. It does not force an unjustifiable resolution to their normative and metaethical differences. I then use the controversies in the torture ethics debate as raw material for developing new descriptions of torture that do not re-engage proprietary ethical frameworks. These advances make possible a more inclusive and robust political ethics of torture.