Paul Kolbet: Augustine, Torture, and the Quest for Certainty

Appeals have been made to Augustine authorizing torture based on a perceived affinity with the realist tradition of political philosophy and a passage in his City of God (book 19) where a wise judge is said to torture out of grim necessity. A comprehensive reading of extant sources reveals, nevertheless, that Augustine was not only consistent in his opposition to torture, but also formulated a far-reaching theology undermining the fear-based quest for certainty that legitimizes torture and similar knowledge acquisition practices. Augustine’s parable of the torturing judge will be shown to be no defense of torture, but instead explained as an especially noteworthy moment in the larger proptreptic that is the City of God. The torturing judge read in its full context exposes the limits of Stoic philosophy its inability to supply either happiness or security. Augustine’s other writing show his deep familiarity with torture as it was practiced in his day, his rejection of it, and his consistent appeals to other rhetorical forms of persuasion that he believed were both more effective and more humane. Without retreating from the world’s exigencies into religious sentimentalities, Augustine developed analytic resources to resist dehumanizing knowledge acquisition practices while also promoting a joyful way of flourishing in the world amid ineradicable insecurity and uncertainty. Rather than a narrow moral issue pertaining only to occasional situations arising from war, terrorism, or egregious crimes, torture is one conspicuous instance among others calling for an ethics of knowledge acquisition more generally.