BOOK REVIEW/TORTURE
How do we become good again?
Charles Fried and Gregory Fried open the moral debate over torture.
By Joshua F Leach
T he appearance of any book
arguing against the use of
torture is a bad sign, in spite
of good intentions. It once was the
case that opposing torture needed no
argument. What could be more self-
evidently malignant, more unarguably
degrading and toxic, than torture?
One hesitated even to argue against it,
to seek out underlying moral reasons
to oppose it, when for so long we could
rely on revulsion and the collective
moral compass of humanity to reject
it without question.
Now, the moral debate has shifted
around the world, and torture is back
on the agenda. Amnesty International
has documented the use of torture
in 150 countries. Even a leading
democracy like the United States has
now authorised and practised torture
against detainees, and the leaders
behind such actions have shown no
signs of contrition.
In his new memoir, Decision
points, George W Bush acknowledges
his personal responsibility for the
water-boarding of Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed. When asked by the CIA
if they had the president’s permission
to carry out the act, Bush responded,
“Damn right!” This admission appears
not in any leaked document or secret
record, but in Bush’s own memoir
– presumably the face he wishes to
present to the public. Torture has
now become a type of cheesy macho
heroism, not a moral evil. Something
has gone very wrong.
As sad as it is, therefore, books
like Because it is wrong have become
necessary once more. Someone has
to return to the root of the matter,
to remind us all exactly why we are
revolted by torture and why we must
never allow it.
The authors take a very clear-cut
position. Not only is torture an evil
to be avoided as often as possible,
they argue, it can never, under no
circumstances, be allowed to take
place. This may seem extreme, but it
is really not so unusual – it is the logic
underlying the Universal declaration of
human rights and the US Declaration
of independence, with its belief that
certain rights are inalienable. That the
authors’ position may seem extreme
to us rather than perfectly obvious is
a sign of our moral decline. It is also
one of the reasons this book had to be
written.
Charles and Gregory Fried are a
father-and-son team of scholars – the
Because it is wrong
Torture, privacy, and presidential
power in the age of terror
Charles Fried and Gregory Fried.
WW Norton, 2010.
Independent World report
former a law professor at Harvard,
and the latter a moral philosopher
at Suffolk University. In Because it is
wrong, they open the moral debate
over torture, but it can not be said
that they close it. They put the finger
on an essential need – to start at the
beginning and ask what it is to be
good or bad, to make right or wrong
decisions. However, they fail to make
a completely satisfactory case.
We need to be more thoroughgoing,
if we are to continue the fight against
torture. We need to know exactly why
we oppose torture, to be able to defend
our positions against all comers.
The authors claim from the
beginning that they are going to take
a deontological rather than a utilitarian
approach to ethics. In philosophical
terms, which means that they are
going to regard certain actions as good
or bad in and of themselves, rather
than because of the effects they may
produce.
Their reasons are compelling.
Essentially, they find that ethics make
no sense at all unless we accept that
certain things have intrinsic value.
Something out there must be good
because of what it is, not because of
the effect it produces. If we look only
at effects, then nothing can be truly
good or bad, because we are only
looking at the end result of a given
action. Each result must have its own
result, which can only be judged by its
result, and so on ad infinitum. We are
left with a worldview which offers us
no moral guidance.
Therefore, the authors manage to
convince us that certain things must
be good or bad in and of themselves,
and it seems that most of us would
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Humanists, after all, may reject
a belief in God, yet they still
recognise the sacredness of
the human person. They even
recognise the worth of the soul,
albeit in non-religious terms, for
they see the soul not as a holy
essence per se, but as an amalgam
of the hopes and dreams, the
capacity for love and depth of
feeling, that is found within the
individual person.
agree with this, from our own
experiences. We never expect good
friends and loved ones to produce a
result greater than themselves. They
are important to us simply for who
they are.
Where the authors fail, however,
is in trying to pinpoint exactly what
has intrinsic value. In doing so, they
often fall back on glowing accounts of
the sacredness of the human person
which may be convincing, but are not
philosophically rigorous.
The book begins with a
contemplation of a painting,
Interrogation I by Leon Golub, which
depicts a prisoner suspended in
the air, being beaten by jackbooted
guards with truncheons and a ruthless
expression. The point, the authors
argue, is that some things can not
really be understood philosophically
– we have to look at them for what
they are. Torture, as depicted in the
painting, is simply bad. It is so bad
in itself that no circumstances can
conceivably justify it. We must ask the
inevitable question: But why? Torture
may seem bad, it may offend our
feelings – but, what is lying beneath
this basic revulsion?
To answer this question, the
authors point first to religion. If
60 ISSUE 6
anything is truly sacred in this world,
it is God, and man was created in God’s
image, as the Bible tells us. Therefore,
when we torture another person, we
are torturing the image of God. We are
committing the ultimate sacrilege.
Of course, one obvious objection
springs to mind: What if one does not
ascribe to such religious tenets? To the
non-believer, it can not be accepted on
faith that man is the image of God. To
justify this belief, one has to come up
with convincing reasons to believe not
only in God but in the whole edifice of
Judeo-Christian religion. This is a task
no religious apologist in history has
managed to accomplish – certainly
there is not enough room for it in a
short book about torture.
There is another obvious problem
with the religious justification, and
that is that a religious worldview
seems to have provided little barrier
to torture in the past. According
to many Christians, after all, God
himself condemns untold millions to
hell, where they languish in eternal
torment. Secular states, meanwhile,
have a far better record on torture
than the theocratic state of Iran,
which recently threatened a mother
of four with execution by stoning.
More to the point, all the chief
architects of the recent US experiments
in torture have held deep religious
convictions, or at least professed
them. We saw the callousness with
which the born-again Bush ordered
torture. Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile,
saw no contradiction between his
religious obligations (his military
briefs were often peppered with
Biblical allusions) and his claim, that
forcing detainees to stand in stress-
positions was no different from times
in his own job when he had to stand
for long periods at a time.
The authors anticipate this
objection and claim that their
argument does not require religious
belief to remain valid. As Gregory
Fried notes in a recent Harper’s
Magazine interview, “We do not think
Independent World report
one must be religious to understand
the ethical point of the imagery or
stories. That would be narrow-minded
indeed. Although perhaps one serious
question here is whether the idea
that there is something sacred about
the dignity of the human person
is ultimately a religious notion,
whatever a secularist or atheist might
believe about that dignity as grounded
in purely humanistic values.”
Humanists, after all, may reject a
belief in God, yet they still recognise
the sacredness of the human person.
They even recognise the worth of the
soul, albeit in non-religious terms, for
they see the soul not as a holy essence
per se, but as an amalgam of the hopes
and dreams, the capacity for love
and depth of feeling, that is found
within the individual person. All that
is required to accept the authors’
account, therefore, is a willingness
to worship the human being – to
see something transcendent and of
infinite value within him.
To accept this argument, however,
is simply to push our original question
back a step further. Again, we ask:
But why? The authors seem at times
to take it as unquestionable or self-
evident that the human being is
sacred. They feel that this is part of
our innate conscience and can not be
disputed.
Clearly, however, it can be
disputed, and is disputed every day
by the actions of rebel armies in
the Congo, dictatorial regimes in
Myanmar and Iran, and slave-drivers
and sex-traffickers the world over. We
live in times when the unspeakable
has become speakable. It might once
have been taken for granted that
we would provide unemployment
benefits for wage-earners laid off
during a recession, or that we would
not allow the sick, the old, and the
mentally disabled to wander our
streets uncared for. Yet, one need
only walk down a street in Chicago or
New York to see that is no longer the
case. We can not be content to rest on

• Because it is wrong
Book excerpt in Harvard Magazine.
www.tinyurl.com/2acrw7x
• A meditation on torture
NPR interview with Charles Fried.
www.tinyurl.com/3ck6k9m
• Six questions for Charles
and Gregory Fried
Harper’s Magazine interview.
www.tinyurl.com/3hret9p
• Because it is wrong
WW Norton, publisher page.
www.tinyurl.com/3tujqnqd
the notion that the human being is
sacred and inviolable when so many
seem to disagree. In short, we can not
take morality for granted.
Charles and Gregory Fried may feel
their own consciences to be innate,
yet they are forgetting that like any
other consciences, they needed to be
carefully grown and cultivated. The
capacity for moral discrimination
relies on trust and love, and only in
societies in which they can be found
are people likely to develop it. It is only
when one has experienced something
better than sadism that one has the
strength to abstain from it. Just as a
money-mad society is likely to forget
that there are greater sources of joy
in life than fast-cash, a torture-mad
society is unlikely to be able to stop
itself or to recall its better nature.
The authors readily admit
this. What they forget is that this
invalidates their own argument. One
can not depend upon a universal
recognition of the dignity of the
individual person, because as soon as
one begins to violate one’s conscience,
this conscience begins to disappear. It
becomes difficult to even remember
the better and simpler things of life
when one finds one’s pleasure in the
wrong places. If we accept that this
applies to an individual taking drugs
or indulging in violence, then we
must accept that it applies to societies
as well. Once we allow torture’s foot
in the door, it is there to stay, and it
becomes more and more difficult to
undo the damage.
We, therefore, must trace our
argument back, much further than
Charles and Gregory Fried seem
willing to go. We have to ask where
our conscience comes from in the first
place, and why we ought to listen to
it. Of course, we have already argued
that a person must be raised in a
family and community which values
the right things in order to develop a
conscience, but why is it necessarily
desirable that he do so?
The answer lies not in a religious
doctrine, but in basic truths about
human beings as a species. Had Charles
and Gregory Fried investigated this
possibility, their account would have
been far more convincing. One can
argue with religion or the dictates of
conscience, but once we see that there
are certain things that human beings
need simply because they are human
beings, the case against torture is
fairly impregnable.
We are what we are because we
evolved to be it, and there are some
things which make us fulfilled and
happy and others which do not. There
may be limited pleasures to be had
from callousness and sadism, but the
joys that come from recognising that
we are fundamentally social beings
are far greater. We need one another,
and we need to respect one another,
because otherwise the love and trust
which are inseparable from human
happiness become impossible.
Torture, just like any other wholly
sadistic act, changes who we are as
people and as a society. It means
that we lose the ability to love and
trust because we reduce ourselves to
ciphers of violence and malice rather
than human beings.
Apologists of torture within the
United States often justify its use by
appealing to the principle of self-
Independent World report
The answer lies not in a religious
doctrine, but in basic truths
about human beings as a species.
Had Charles and Gregory Fried
investigated this possibility, their
account would have been far
more convincing. One can argue
with religion or the dictates of
conscience, but once we see that
there are certain things that
human beings need simply because
they are human beings, the
case against torture is
fairly impregnable.
preservation. To escape destruction
by bomb or terror attack, the
government must reserve the right to
use any means necessary to save itself,
they argue, even the unthinkable.
Despite certain flaws in their
book, Charles and Gregory Fried are
profoundly correct when they respond
to this argument, and point out the
basic flaw in its reasoning: what, when
we torture to preserve ourselves, are
we really preserving? If, in the US, we
lose certain things about our nation,
particularly the understanding of
ourselves as the first democratic
nation, the first country in the world
to recognise officially the injustice of
cruel and unusual punishment, then
what have we preserved?
To return to the Bible of which our
authors are so fond: “For what shall it
profit a man [or, we may add, a country]
if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose thereby his own soul” (Mark
8:36).
Joshua F Leach is a writer and human rights
advocate.
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