Torture is not to be condemned merely because it does not produce the effects expected; it is to be condemned, first and foremost, because it is an u… - Tzvetan Todorov
" "Torture is not to be condemned merely because it does not produce the effects expected; it is to be condemned, first and foremost, because it is an unacceptable attack on the very idea of humanity. It is the surest index of barbarism – that extreme pole in human behaviour that leads us to ride roughshod over the humanity of the other. Yet again, torture is in this respect worse than murder, since by torturing I do not remain content with eliminating the person to whom I object, I draw satisfaction from his suffering, from excluding him from humanity, and this intense pleasure lasts for as long as he is alive. Torture leaves an indelible mark on the person tortured but also on the torturer. Institutional torture is even worse than individual torture, since it subverts every idea of justice and right. If the state itself becomes a torturer, how can we believe in the order that it claims to bring or to endorse?
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About Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (1 March 1939 - 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist, essayist and geologist.
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Цветан Тодоров
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A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. We should struggle not against the devil himself but what allows the devil to live — Manichaean thinking itself.
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