"The Case for Torture," Vocabulary from the essay

In Newsweek, philosophy professor Michael Levin presents many cases in which torture might be justifiable.

Here is a link to our list for an editorial with an opposing view: Torture's Terrible Toll
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. mandatory
    required by rule
    There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory.
  2. disclose
    make known to the public information previously kept secret
    Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 a.m. of the fateful day, but - preferring death to failure - won't disclose where the bomb is.
  3. excruciating
    extremely painful
    If the only way to save those lives is to subject the terrorist to the most excruciating possible pain, what grounds can there be for not doing so?
  4. deference
    courteous regard for people's feelings
    Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands.
    "Deference" can also mean "a disposition or tendency to yield to the will of others"--this is negatively suggested by the example sentence to emphasize that one who would not resort to torture to save lives is weak and cowardly. The example sentence also touches on the pride of Americans by suggesting that showing deference to a terrorist means allowing him to flaunt ("display proudly") his guilt in our face.
  5. concede
    acknowledge defeat
    Once you concede that torture is justified in extreme cases, you have admitted that the decision to use torture is a matter of balancing innocent lives against the means needed to save them.
  6. precedent
    an example that is used to justify similar occurrences
    Someone plants a bomb on a jumbo jet. He alone can disarm it, and his demands cannot be met (or if they can, we refuse to set a precedent by yielding to his threats).
  7. agony
    intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain
    How can we tell 300, or 100, or 10 people who never asked to be put in danger, "I'm sorry, you'll have to die in agony, we just couldn't bring ourselves to. . ."
  8. advocate
    speak, plead, or argue in favor of
    Rather, I am advocating torture as an acceptable measure for preventing future evils.
  9. extant
    still in existence; not extinct or destroyed or lost
    So understood, it is far less objectionable than many extant punishments.
  10. deterrence
    the act or process of discouraging actions
    Opponents of the death penalty, for example, are forever insisting that executing a murderer will not bring back his victim (as if the purpose of capital punishment were supposed to be resurrection, not deterrence or retribution).
  11. dispatch
    kill intentionally and with premeditation
    But torture, in the cases described, is intended not to bring anyone back but to keep innocents from being dispatched.
  12. preemptive
    designed to prevent an anticipated situation or occurrence
    Better precedents for torture are assassination and preemptive attack.
    The essay suggests that the purposes for torture and punishment should not be the same. But this example sentence emphasizes that torture, like an assassination of a dictator, a preemptive attack on a hostile country, or an execution of a convicted murderer, is a justifiable deterrence for future cruelties or attacks.
  13. renounce
    turn away from; give up
    By threatening to kill for profit or idealism, he renounces civilized standards, and he can have no complaint if civilization tries to thwart him by whatever means necessary.
  14. extort
    obtain by coercion or intimidation
    Just as torture is justified only to save lives (not extort confessions or recantations), it is justifiably administered only to those known to hold innocent lives in their hands.
  15. malefactor
    someone who has committed a crime
    Ah, but how can the authorities ever be sure they have the right malefactor?
  16. disingenuous
    not straightforward or candid
    Questions like these are disingenuous in a world in which terrorists proclaim themselves and perform for television.
  17. intimidate
    compel or deter by or as if by threats
    After all, you can't very well intimidate a government into releasing your freedom fighters unless you announce that it is your group that has seized its embassy.
  18. perpetrator
    someone who commits wrongdoing
    "Clear guilt" is difficult to define, but when 40 million people see a group of masked gunmen seize an airplane on the evening news, there is not much question about who the perpetrators are.
  19. demarcate
    set, mark, or draw the boundaries of something
    Nonetheless, a line demarcating the legitimate use of torture can be drawn.
  20. paralysis
    loss of the ability to move a body part
    Paralysis in the face of evil is the greater danger.
Created on Thu May 28 15:37:39 EDT 2015 (updated Thu May 28 18:55:21 EDT 2015)

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