Among the contributions of contemporary philosophy is the personalistic principle, which philosophers such as Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, and Karol Wojtyla have developed in their unique ways. This principle states that we may not treat a person as only the means to an end, as an instrument. We must treat the person as a “Thou,” not as an “It” or as a thing. This principle lies at the basis of all human freedoms.
Torture violates this principle in the most horrific way. The torturer does not merely give the tortured person incentives to motivate the will; he seeks to break the tortured person’s will by breaking the body and/or the mind. He seeks to control the person by making him into something less than a person. He works not with the person’s freedom, but against it.
We ascertain what constitutes torture not only by the severity of pain inflicted, but also by whether or not the interrogation respects the interrogated person’s freedom and personhood. For an interrogation technique to be just, it must work with the interrogated person’s freedom; it must not reduce him to an instrument, but respect him as a person. Motivating an interrogated person’s will with incentives isn’t necessarily evil, but breaking his will always is.
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