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What makes torture wrong, according to David Sussman? Moreover, what do torture and seduction have in common?

According to David Sussman in his 2004 article "What's Wrong with Torture?" (in Philosophy and Public Affairs), torture is morally objectionable in a way that other forms of coercion are not, and he says that the use of torture demands a particularly high burden of justification. Here is the crux of his argument:



"I argue that torture forces its victim into the position of colluding against himself through his own affects and emotions, so that he experiences himself as simultaneously powerless and yet actively complicit in his own violation. So construed, torture turns out to be not just an extreme form of cruelty, but the pre-eminent instance of a kind of forced self-betrayal, more akin to rape than other kinds of violence characteristic of warfare or police action."



In other words, torture involves making the victim turn against him or herself in a form of self-betrayal that Sussman compares to the type of violation that rape victims experience. He differentiates torture from the experience of physical pain, as torture also involves an unequal power relationship with the perpetrator so that the victim cannot defend him or herself. The power relationship is one of asymmetry, and the victim cannot defend him or herself psychologically or physically. The victim is at the complete mercy of his or her captors and cannot independently verify what they tell him or her. 


Torture is similar to seduction in that torture can involve an immense physical sensation that people can choose to try to ignore or to submit to. As in the act of seduction, torture also involves a complete involvement with the needs and interests of the other person. Like the torturer, the seducer tries to work on the mind and body of the other person to bend the other person to his or her will. While the seducer manipulates the desires of the other person, the torturer manipulates such desires as sleep, food, or other urges. Both processes can involve submitting the victim to shame as a form of coercion. 

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