Torture and Dignity: An Essay on Moral Injury

In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations—torture—J. M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals.               Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person—it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience. 

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction Part One : History, Phenomenology, and Moral Analysis One / Abolishing Torture and the Uprising of the Rule of Law I. Introduction II. Abolishing Torture: The Dignity of Tormentable Bodies III. Torture and the Rule of Law: Beccaria IV. The Beccaria Thesis V. Forgetting Beccaria Two / On Being Tortured I. Introduction II. Pain: Certainty and Separateness III. Améry’s Torture IV. Pain’s Aversiveness V. Pain: Feeling or Reason? VI. Sovereignty: Pain and the Other VII. Without Borders: Loss of Trust in the World Three / The Harm of Rape, The Harm of Torture I. Introduction: Rape and/as Torture II. Moral Injury as Appearance III. Moral Injury as Actual: Bodily Persons IV. On Being Raped V. Exploiting the Moral Ontology of the Body: Rape VI. Exploiting the Moral Ontology of the Body: Torture Part Two : Constructing Moral Dignity Four / To Be Is to Live, to Be Is to Be Recognized I. Introduction II. To Be Is to Be Recognized III. Risk and the Necessity of Life for Self-Consciousness IV. Being and Having a Body V. From Life to Recognition Five / Trust as Mutual Recognition I. Introduction II. The Necessity, Pervasiveness, and Invisibility of Trust III. Trust’s Priority over Reason IV. Trust in a Developmental Setting V. On First Love: Trust as the Recognition of Intrinsic Worth Six / “My Body . . . My Physical and Metaphysical Dignity” I. Why Dignity? II. From Nuremberg to Treblinka: The Fate of the Unlovable III. Without Rights, without Dignity: From Humiliation to Devastation IV. Dignity and the Human Form V. The Body without Dignity VI. My Body: Voluntary and Involuntary VII. Bodily Revolt: Respect, Self-Respect, and Dignity Concluding Remarks : On Moral Alienation I. The Abolition of Torture and Utilitarian Fantasies II. Moral Alienation and the Persistence of Rape Notes Index

About the Author :
J. M. Bernstein is distinguished professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of many books, including Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics; Against Voluptuous Bodies: Adorno’s Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting; and Recovering Ethical Life: Jürgen Habermas and the Future of Critical Theory.

Review :
"Bernstein (New School for Social Research) presents a strong case for moving ethical inquiry in a new direction... Bernstein's presentation is clear, original, and persuasive... Highly recommended." "Bernstein’s moral instincts strike as sound, and his novel ideas pertaining to embodiment, trust, and love — and their relation to dignity — strike as insightful contributions to moral psychology." “A complex and enigmatic discussion of torture and rape.”