Just because a book has "bestseller" scribbled at the top does not mean anyone has actually read the book, if that was the case it would say "most read" or something to that effect. The truth is Sam Harris's End of Faith seems to have been simply purchased by a lot of people with out being read. That is apparently until recently.
I was reading the Friendly Atheist blog today, about a statement that Richard Dawkin's made defending Harris as some kind hard boiled moral philosopher who is simply asking tough questions, and he doesn't deserve all the negative feed back from the internet. A little while ago Friendly Atheist also commented on Harris's response to the "trolls" on the internet who were giving him a hard time about his stance on torture.
What both Hemant and Dawkins seem to forget is: first, the historical context in which Sam Harris was making his statements about torture, and secondly what Nietzsche had to say about a philosopher and his philosophy.
First, lets talk about the Harris was making his statements on torture. The End of Faith was published in 2004. Also, in 2004 the photos from Abu Ghraib surfaced in the news. America at that time had been and was using all if its might in its Shock and Awe campaign against "terrorism" globally. Lots of men and women were being taken from their homes with black hoods over their heads to be shipped to "Free To Torture Zones." Most with out trial or having it explained to them what they were being accused of. Men and Women were raped, humiliated, water boarded and so on. It reminds one of the inquisition, but on a larger scale.
What did Sam Harris say about torture?
"... if we are willing to act in a way that guarantees the misery and death of some considerable number of innocent children (Harris is referring to children who are killed in US bombings of other countries) , why spare the rod with suspected terrorists? What is the difference between pursuing a course of action where we run the risk of inadvertently subjecting some innocent men to torture, and pursuing one in which we will inadvertently kill a far greater numbers of innocent men women and children? Rather, it seems obvious that the misapplication of torture should be far less troubling to us than collateral damage; There are after all, no infants interned at Guatanamo bay, just rather scrofulous young men (Harris fails account for the women), many of whom where caught in the very act of trying to kill our soldiers (no source cited about the accuracy of this claim)." (p. 194)
"We could easily devise methods of torture that would render a torturer as blind to the plight of the victim as a bomber pilot is at thirty thousand feet. consequently our natural aversion to the sight and sounds of the dungeon provide no foothold for those who would argue against the use of torture. To demonstrate how abstract the torments of the tortured can be made to see, we need only imaging an idea "torture pill" - A drugh that would deliver both the instruments of torture and the instruments of their utter concealment. The action of the pill would be to product transitory paralysis and transitory misery of a kind that no human being would willing submit to a second time. Imaging how we tortures would fee if, after giving this pill to captive terrorists, each lay down for what appeared to be an hour's nap only to arise and immediately confess everything he knows about the workings of his organization. Might we not be tempted to call it a "truth pill" in the end?" (P.197)
"...I believe we must accept the fact that violence (or its threat) is often an ethical necessity." (p.199)
What seems to be forgotten to the historical memory is absurd patriotic and pro-imperialist statements of Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens during the post-911 "new atheist" wave. Looking back it seems so bizarre that the Harris and Hitchens weren't met with backlash. Though at the time the sales of american flags were sky rocketing, and the news of the atrocity of US military actions, privatization and corporate greed were not getting any where near the coverage they would get today.
Harris's statements then and now are one's of nationalist utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is not the science of morals that Harris would have us to believe. The moral/ethical theory of utilitarianism is kind of ethical math were we assign values to outcomes of actions and measure those actions against each other, the one with more positive results becomes the more ethical result, and justifies the means taken to get the ends. Where is Harris's discussion of values? Harris assumes with out debate the patriotic stance in the primacy of the US citizen over the 3rd world citizen, that our children futures and lives are more important than a terrorist or (and lets keep in mind this second part) the supposed individual with unproven terrorist organization associations. This is where Harris sides with George Bush II and the patriot act.
Slavjo Zizek Argues against Harris in reference to the torture pill:
"The very first lines - "a drug that would deliver both the instruments of torture and the instrument of their utter concealment" - introduces the typically postmodern logic of chocolate laxative: the torture imagined here is like a decaf coffee - we get the result without having to suffer unpleasant side-effects. The first reaction: at the Serbsky Institute, they have already invented a similar drug to torture dissidents, an injection into the prisoner's heart zone which slowed down his heart beating and caused terrifying anxiety - viewed from outside, the prisoner seemed just dozing, while he was going through a nightmare... The further problem is that Harris violates here his own rule when he focuses on September 11, and in his critique of Chomsky: the point of Chomsky is precisely the hypocrisy of tolerating the abstract-anonymous killing of thousands while condemning individual cases of the violation of human rights - why is Kissinger, when he ordered the carpet bombing of Cambodia that led to the death of tens of thousands, less a criminal than those responsible for the Twin Towers collapse? Is it not that because we are precisely victims of the "ethical illusion": the horror of September 11 was presented in detail in the media, while - to take another case - when the al-Jazeera TV shows shots of the results of the US bombing of Faludja it was condemned for its complicity with the terrorists...
There is, however, a much more disquieting prospect at work here: the proximity (of the tortured subject) which causes sympathy and makes torture unacceptable is not a mere physical proximity, but, at its most fundamental, the proximity of the Neighbor (with all the Judeo-Christian-Freudian weight on this term), of the Thing which, no matter how far away it is physically, is always by definition "too close." Consequently, what Harris aims at with his imagined "truth pill" is nothing less than the abolition of the dimension of the Neighbor: the tortured subject is no longer a Neighbor, but an object whose pain is neutralized, reduced to a property that has to be dealt with in a rational utilitarian calculus (so much pain is tolerable if it prevents a much greater amount of pain) - what disappears here is the abyss of the infinity that pertains to a subject. It is thus significant that the book which argues for torture is also the book entitled The End of Belief - not, however, in the obvious sense of "You see, it is only our belief in God, the divine injunction to love your neighbor, that ultimately prevents us from torturing people!", but in a much more radical sense. Another subject (and, ultimately, subject as such) is for Lacan not something directly given, but a "presupposition," something presumed, an object of belief - how can I ever be sure that what I see in front of me is another subject, not a depthless flat biological machine?"
And on to my second point:
Nietzsche argued that you cannot separate a philosopher from his philosophy (that is if he is authentically a philosopher). Philosophy is not like art in the sense that you can dissociation the painting of a women being water-boarded from painter who paints a painting of a women being water-boarded. Philosophy is an expression of a personal ideology. So when Harris states "I believe we must accept the fact that violence (or it's threat) is often an ethical necessity," we should take him on his word. Sam Harris is in fact a violent philosopher of violence who is not just playing word games as Richard Dawkins would have you think. Harris is telling us directly what he thinks about the world, and what moral principal he thinks we should live by. Moral philosophy is worth nothing if its solely designed for personal edification, and was never intended to be adapted to the world for its improvement. I don't think Dawkins has any idea what philosophy is.
Dawkins States:
"...if moral conclusions were intuitively obvious we wouldn't need moral philosophers. Moral philosophers devise difficult and uncomforable thought experiments, which sometimes lead to counter-intuitve and unpopular conclusions, and they are often scorned and vilified for doing what they do. Peter Singer is violently threatened because he dares to ask questions like "Do all humans, no matter whether embryonically young or vegetatively old, deserve more moral consideration than a cow in its prime in a slaughterhouse?" Other moral philosophers ask uncomfortable questions like "When miners are trapped underground, should resources needed to rescue them be diverted to feeding starving children?" As it happens, I would rescue the miners, but I can see that there is a serious argument to be had. Like it or not, that is what moral philosophers do. If all moral questions had intuitively obviously, self-evident answers, we wouldn't need moral philosophers."
While there is an aspect of philosophy that is about asking questions. A question is not philosophical independent of its answer. One must attempt to answer those questions. Harris answered the question of torture with an unabashed YES. Why won't Richard Dawkins and The Friendly Atheist let Sam Harris own his pro-torture stance? Hell, why won't Harris own it? Maybe the Friendly Atheist, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins should sit down and conduct a reading group to actually read the book.
References:
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination by Kristian Williams
