Beyond Durkheim: A comment on Steven Lukes's 'liberal democratic torture'

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 567-570

  Levey, Geoffrey Brahm ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34250019414     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123407000294     Document Type: Note

References (15)

1. Steven Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', British Journal of Political Science, 36 (2006), 1-16.
2. Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', p. 13.
3. Alan M. Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
4. Richard Posner quoted in Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', p. 15.
5. Durkheim quoted in Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture", p. 14. Lukes is drawing on Durkheim's essay 'Individualism and the Intellectuals' (1898), translated by S. and J. Lukes, Political Studies, 17 (1969), 19-29.
6. Durkheim quoted in Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', p. 14.
7. Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', p. 14.
8. Steven Lukes, 'Durkheim's "Individualism and the Intellectuals" ', Political Studies, 17(1969), 14-30, p. 15.
9. Lukes, 'Durkheim's "Individualism and the Intellectuals" ', p. 15.
10. Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', p. 14.
11. Durkheim quoted in Lukes, 'Durkheim's "Individualism and the Intellectuals" ', p. 19.
12. Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work (Harmondsworth, Midx: Penguin, 1975), p. 23.
13. Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture", p. 4. Lukes is referring, in particular, to Michael Ignatieff s The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004). By the 'lesser evil', Ignatieff means not a consequentialist calculation of the 'greater good', where even small differences are decisive, but rather an acceptance of the vying moral commitments often involved in political decision making, and where a morality of consequences may sometimes overwhelm a morality of dignity. Ignatieff holds that torture should not be countenanced in any circumstances.
14. Lukes, 'Liberal Democratic Torture', p. 2.
15. See Steven Lukes, 'Making Sense of Moral Conflict', in Nancy L. Rosenblum. ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 127-42.