Mainstreaming Torture Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States
Mainstreaming Torture Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States
- ISBN 13:
9780199336432
- ISBN 10:
0199336431
- Format: Hardcover
- Copyright: 05/08/2014
- Publisher: Oxford University Press
List Price $64.00 Save
TERM | PRICE | DUE |
---|---|---|
Free Shipping Both Ways
Highlight/Take Notes Like You Own It
Purchase/Extend Before Due Date
List Price $64.00 Save $0.64
Usually Ships in 3-5 Business Days
We Buy This Book Back!
Free Shipping On Every Order
Note: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
Extend or Purchase Your Rental at Any Time
Need to keep your rental past your due date? At any time before your due date you can extend or purchase your rental through your account.
Summary
Gordon argues that the most common ethical approaches to torture--utilitarianism and deontology (ethics based on adherence to duty)--do not provide sufficient theoretical purchase on the problem. Both approaches treat torture as a series of isolated actions that arise in moments of extremity, rather than as an ongoing, historically and socially embedded practice. She advocates instead a virtue ethics approach, based in part on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Such an approach better illumines torture's ethical dimensions, taking into account the implications of torture for human virtue and flourishing. An examination of torture's effect on the four cardinal virtues--courage, temperance, justice, and prudence (or practical reason)--suggests specific ways in which each of these are deformed in a society that countenances torture.
Mainstreaming Torture concludes with the observation that if the United States is to come to terms with its involvement in institutionalized state torture, there must be a full and official accounting of what has been done, and those responsible at the highest levels must be held accountable.