Is Torture In Guantanamo Bay Ethical?

Is torture in Guantanamo Bay Ethical? While it may seem like an easy question to answer our country is vastly divided on this subject. There are countless parts to consider in order to truly be confident when answering a question like this. The circumstances alone can sway philosophers to debate on whether or not torture is right or not. I personally feel that torture is an unnecessary evil that has remained the same for ages. Throughout this paper I will demonstrate what has lead me to this conclusion by applying the modern problem of Guantanamo Bay to the famous philosophical ideas of Martha Nussbaum and Jeremy Bentham. What is Guantanamo Bay, and why does torture play such a big role in its existence? Guantanamo Bay is a US military prison

However, this is unlike any other US prison. One of the main goals at Guantanamo Bay is to extract information from prisoners with any means necessary. This is done through various ways of making these prisoners lives horrible. Some methods include electric torture, sensory deprivation, and extreme exposure to the elements. This horrible treatment is looked at as legal by the US government because it is located on foreign soil therefore it does not apply to the same laws that we have in the US.

While people may see torture as a necessary evil in order to stop terror attacks, the ethical dilemma of whether or not this is morally right still remains. In the article “Compassion and Terror” written by Martha Nussbaum, readers are introduced to several ideas on how humanity faces and deals with terrible situations. Nussbaum believes that terror affects humanity based on its relatedness to every person. This means that if something terrible happens, it is more likely to have a bigger effect on somebody that lives near the tragedy, than somebody that lives across the world. An example of this is

In Bentham’s article “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation”, he introduces the philosophy of Utilitarianism. He believed that as humans our actions are driven to achieve the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of pain. He demonstrates this in his article by saying “Start with the thought that it goes the whole way: the condition of the ward is exactly that of pure slavery. Now vary that by giving the guardian the obligation that turns his power into a trust; it is the obligation to act in the way that is most likely to bring to the ward the greatest quantity of happiness that his faculties and circumstances will allow (subject only to the guardian’s being permitted to care about his own happiness and obliged to care about the happiness of other men)” (Bentham 128). Using this idea, he felt that humans strive as a whole to achieve the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. From this idea stemmed his Hedonic Calculus. Hedonic calculus assigns two different units to each action, hedons for a unit of pleasure and dolors for a unit of pain. With these measurements you are able to assign value to decisions and their effects, therefore, allowing somebody to more accurately decide what is the right thing to do to bring this greatest good. This compares to Guantanamo Bay because this calculus can