Name: Confronting Torture: Essays on the Ethics, Legality, History, and Psychology of Torture Today
SKU: 50141570
Price: 2850.00 ZAR
Availability: InStock
Author: Martha C. Nussbaum
ISBN: 9780226529387

portada Confronting Torture: Essays on the Ethics, Legality, History, and Psychology of Torture Today

Confronting Torture: Essays on the Ethics, Legality, History, and Psychology of Torture Today

Type

Physical Book

Illustrated by

Martha C. Nussbaum

Scott A. Anderson

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Author

Martha C. Nussbaum

Language

English

Pages

384

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

23.1x15.2x2.5 cm

Weight

0.52 kg.

ISBN13

9780226529387

Synopsis "Confronting Torture: Essays on the Ethics, Legality, History, and Psychology of Torture Today"

Torture has lately become front page news, featured in popular movies and TV shows, and a topic of intense public debate. It grips our imagination, in part because torturing someone seems to be an unthinkable breach of humanity--theirs and ours. And yet, when confronted with horrendous events in war, or the prospect of catastrophic damage to one's own country, many come to wonder whether we can really afford to abstain entirely from torture. Before trying to tackle this dilemma, though, we need to see torture as a multifaceted problem with a long history and numerous ethical and legal aspects. Confronting Torture offers a multidisciplinary investigation of this wrenching topic. Editors Scott A. Anderson and Martha C. Nussbaum bring together a diversity of scholars to grapple with many of torture's complexities, including: How should we understand the impetus to use torture? Why does torture stand out as a particularly heinous means of war-fighting? Are there any sound justifications for the use of torture? How does torture affect the societies that employ it? And how can we develop ethical or political bulwarks to prevent its use? The essays here resist the temptation to oversimplify torture, drawing together work from scholars in psychology, history, sociology, law, and philosophy, deepening and broadening our grasp of the subject. Now, more than ever, torture is something we must think about; this important book offers a diversity of timely, constructive responses on this resurgent and controversial subject.

Martha C. Nussbaum

(Illustrated by)

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Martha Craven Nussbaum (New York, USA, 1947) studied at her hometown university and earned a PhD in Law and Ethics at Harvard in 1975. Founder and coordinator of the Center for Comparative Constitutionalism, she is currently the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the Department of Philosophy, the Law School, and the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, after having taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford.

Considered one of the most innovative and influential philosophical voices in the current landscape and a defender of the role of the humanities in education, Nussbaum advocates in her work a universal conception of women's rights that can overcome the limits of cultural relativism. Her theories start from the conviction that people who understand the good differently can agree on some universal ethical principles that are applicable wherever there is a situation of inequality and injustice. She has also proposed a constitutional and political framework respectful of local traditions and institutions that can be translated into political objectives in specific contexts, laying the groundwork for ethically justifying development aid.

Between 1986 and 1993, she was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (Helsinki, Finland), which is part of the United Nations University. She has chaired the Committee for International Cooperation and the Committee on the Status of Women, both of the American Philosophical Association. She has been a member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Council of Learned Societies Union.

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