Monk

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Clever! And it even brought a smile to Monk's weary face. Slavoj Zizek is writing on the torture question, and he brilliantly applies a Hegelian philosophical tool and reinforces it with a provocative analogy:

In a way, those who refuse to advocate torture outright but still accept it as a legitimate topic of debate are more dangerous than those who explicitly endorse it. Morality is never just a matter of individual conscience. It thrives only if it is sustained by what Hegel called “objective spirit,” the set of unwritten rules that form the background of every individual’s activity, telling us what is acceptable and what is unacceptable.

For example, a clear sign of progress in Western society is that one does not need to argue against rape: it is “dogmatically” clear to everyone that rape is wrong. If someone were to advocate the legitimacy of rape, he would appear so ridiculous as to disqualify himself from any further consideration. And the same should hold for torture.

However, Mr. Zizek earlier demonstrated why the issue is not that clear and simple, by admitting that he can see himself using torture but then goes on trying to qualify it in a way that may be philosophically sensible but not very practical:

Yes, most of us can imagine a singular situation in which we might resort to torture — to save a loved one from immediate, unspeakable harm perhaps. I can. In such a case, however, it is crucial that I do not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle. In the unavoidable brutal urgency of the moment, I should simply do it. But it cannot become an acceptable standard; I must retain the proper sense of the horror of what I did. And when torture becomes just another in the list of counterterrorism techniques, all sense of horror is lost.

Still, this notion of "objective spirit" was fresh and meaningful. I don't recall coming across it before.


(Source: Slavog Zizek for The New York Times)

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