Is Torture ever OK?

Is torture ever justified? Spooks – the BBC 1 spy drama – certainly gave the impression that it was this week. In Tuesday’s episode, a deadly virus had been released into the UK, and thousands were going to die unless a vaccine was found. The drama portrayed the British agents resorting to torture to discover the location of the vaccine. All of this was done without any suggestion that what they were doing might be wrong. In fact, the clear impression was given that they were heroes in doing whatever was necessary to save the nation.

Moral philosophers love these kinds of scenarios. If people are asked whether torturing children is ever acceptable, most of us instinctively say no. But if we’re told that torturing the child is the only way to get a terrorist to tell you where they have planted a nuclear bomb, then some of us are less certain.

This is not just a game though. In recent months, more evidence has emerged from the US of what is euphemistically termed “enhanced interrogation”, but which at least some commentators have called “torture”. Once again, the justification is that this is all part of avoiding greater atrocities – that in the war on terror anything is permitted that will save the lives of thousands.

It may be difficult to know whether such harsh interrogation techniques are acceptable – though my instincts say they’re not – but what is clear is that the moral framework used to justify them does not belong to God. The roots of this approach can be traced back to Epicurus (of Acts 17 fame), but it received its modern description in the 19th century and is called utilitarianism. Its basic assumption is that something is right if it increases pleasure or happiness and decreases pain. One result of this is that the end can be used to justify the means if the end that is good outweighs the means that are evil. So by this logic, torture is acceptable because saving the lives of thousands outweighs the dreadful suffering of just one person.

But do you see the problem with this? The problem is that it does nothing to protect the weak and vulnerable, those who cannot speak up for themselves. It was a utilitarian approach that justified the Nazi slaughter of disabled adults and children, and those who were considered genetically inferior. It was a utilitarian approach that let Stalin and Mao commit genocide in their own countries, as they were doing it “for the greater good”.

While at first sight it might seem to be a rational approach to ethics, on closer examination, it is both theoretically and practically inadequate. What is needed is a different system of ethics: one that protects the vulnerable, rather than counts them as expendable; that recognises the intrinsic value and dignity of every human life, and not just some; and one that acknowledges that we may not be the best people to judge the relative worth of other people’s lives. For all of this, I cannot think of any other source than the God who created all in his image, and commands us to love all, especially the weakest among us.

So, if you end up discussing torture this weekend, perhaps the point to be made is that we are following an extremely dangerous path if we think a simple utilitarian calculation is all that is needed. Human beings are not pawns in a grand game of chess where we decide who is sacrificed and who lives. Humans are of so much more value than that – a point, which in the absence of God, we so easily forget.

Dr Justin Thacker, Head of Theology

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