[PDF] Tortured eBook

Author : Lisa Silverman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 41,35 MB
Release : 2001-05-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780226757537

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At one time in Europe, there was a point to pain: physical suffering could be a path to redemption. This religious notion suggested that truth was lodged in the body and could be achieved through torture. In Tortured Subjects, Lisa Silverman tells the haunting story of how this idea became a fixed part of the French legal system during the early modern period. Looking closely at the theory and practice of judicial torture in France from 1600 to 1788, the year in which it was formally abolished, Silverman revisits dossiers compiled in criminal cases, including transcripts of interrogations conducted under torture, as well as the writings of physicians and surgeons concerned with the problem of pain, records of religious confraternities, diaries and letters of witnesses to public executions, and the writings of torture's abolitionists and apologists. She contends that torture was at the center of an epistemological crisis that forced French jurists and intellectuals to reconsider the relationship between coercion and sincerity, or between free will and evidence. As the philosophical consensus on which torture rested broke down, and definitions of truth and pain shifted, so too did the foundation of torture, until by the eighteenth century, it became an indefensible practice.

Author : Uwe Steinhoff
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 42,17 MB
Release : 2013-04-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 1438446217

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The question of when, and under what circumstances, the practice of torture might be justified has received a great deal of attention in the last decade in both academia and in the popular media. Many of these discussions are, however, one-sided with other perspectives either ignored or quickly dismissed with minimal argument. In On the Ethics of Torture, Uwe Steinhoff provides a complete account of the philosophical debate surrounding this highly contentious subject. Steinhoff s position is that torture is sometimes, under certain narrowly circumscribed conditions, justified, basing his argument on the right to self-defense. His position differs from that of other authors who, using other philosophical justifications, would permit torture under a wider set of conditions. After having given the reader a thorough account of the main arguments for permitting torture under certain circumstances, Steinhoff explains and addresses the many objections that have been raised to employing torture under any circumstances. This is an indispensible work for anyone interested in one of the most controversial subjects of our times.

Author : John Conroy
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 22,19 MB
Release : 2001-09-25
Category : History
ISBN : 0520230396

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An examination of torture (in the name of the state) in three democracies (Israel, Northern Ireland, and the United States) by John Conroy, a Chicago journalist with a strong following among readers who know his previous book (a war diary of life in Belfast).

Author : Donatella Di Cesare
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 35,49 MB
Release : 2018-10-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 150952438X

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Torture is not as universally condemned as it once was. From Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib prisons to the death of Giulio Regeni, countless recent cases have shocked public opinion. But if we want to defend the human dignity that torture violates, simple indignation is not enough. In this important book, Donatella Di Cesare provides a critical perspective on torture in all its dimensions. She seeks to capture the peculiarity of an extreme and methodical violence where the tormentor calculates and measures out pain so that he can hold off the victim’s death, allowing him to continue to exercise his sovereign power. For the victim, being tortured is like experiencing his own death while he is still alive. Torture is a threat wherever the defenceless find themselves in the hands of the strong: in prisons, in migrant camps, in nursing homes, in centres for the disabled and in institutions for minors. This impassioned book will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy and political theory as well as to anyone committed to defending human rights as universal and inviolable.

Author : Mirko Bagaric
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 130 pages
File Size : 42,86 MB
Release : 2007-05-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0791479676

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Argues that there are moral grounds to use torture where the lives of the innocent are at stake.

Author : Alfred W. McCoy
Publisher : University of Wisconsin Pres
Page : 423 pages
File Size : 25,89 MB
Release : 2012-08-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0299288536

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Many Americans have condemned the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government. During the Cold War, McCoy argues, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency covertly funded psychological experiments designed to weaken a subject’s resistance to interrogation. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA revived these harsh methods, while U.S. media was flooded with seductive images that normalized torture for many Americans. Ten years later, the U.S. had failed to punish the perpetrators or the powerful who commanded them, and continued to exploit intelligence extracted under torture by surrogates from Somalia to Afghanistan. Although Washington has publicly distanced itself from torture, disturbing images from the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are seared into human memory, doing lasting damage to America’s moral authority as a world leader.

Author : Human Rights Watch (Organization)
Publisher : Human Rights Watch
Page : 82 pages
File Size : 45,42 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1564324834

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A short history of impunity -- Key cases of impunity the new government should address -- Causes and solutions for impunity in Bangladesh -- Recommendations.