ethics & morality · new to this edition
the ticking time bomb
a bomb is hidden somewhere in the city and the man who hid it is in your custody. find out what your answer depends on, and whether it survives the real world.
The ticking bomb is the case most often used to argue that the ban on torture cannot be absolute. Jeremy Bentham sketched a version in 1804; Jean Lartéguy’s novel Les Centurions, set in the Algerian war, made it famous in the 1960s; after September 2001 it moved from seminars into legal memos and television drama. Against it stands the UN Convention against Torture, which says that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever” may be invoked to justify torture. Four scenes ask what you would do, and then change one thing at a time to find out which part of the case your answer rests on.
further reading
- ticking time bomb scenario wikipedia
- torture stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
- torture (1978), reprinted in fighting hurt original paper
- liberalism, torture, and the ticking bomb original paper
- magnus gäfgen and the daschner case wikipedia