What, never? While I can’t be sure of the actual (as opposed to professed) motivations of people who tortured alleged witches, I’m pretty sure that in some cases the ostensible purpose of the torture was to produce repentance and thereby save the witch’s immortal soul. For someone who believes in immortal souls and heaven and hell and so forth, that could easily end up seeming like a transaction that benefits the torturee overall.
(I agree with your second paragraph, though I’m not sure anyone’s doing quite what you describe.)
This exact reasoning was generally used to justify the torture of heretics (not witches) until they recanted. After all, no Earthly torture could ever be worse than eternity in Hell, so most versions of utilitarianism would allow anything that keeps souls out of Hell.
No, you’re right, I’m sure there are cases in which torturers could at least rationalize that what they were doing was for the sake of the woman’s soul.
I’ve often wondered, from my time as a Catholic: if I intentionally kill someone at the moment of their confession/absolution, such that their soul is perfectly clean and I have extremely good reason to believe (within this framework) that their soul will go to Heaven, would I not be making the truly ultimate sacrifice? If my soul then were to go to Hell, I would have been literally as altruistic as it is possible to be, so my soul should go to Heaven; knowing that, however, might make me go to Hell?
Which is why reasonable moral systems ought to be slow to categorize others’ good-faith actions as evil—we never know what we are doing wrong. There’s some chance that future civilizations will think of me as evil for eating meat—hell, they could think of our civilization as barbaric for consuming living beings at all, rather than synthesizing sustenance some other way.
Not the truly ultimate sacrifice from that perspective, no. I recommend Jorge Luis Borges’s short fiction Three versions of Judas for further ideas along those lines.
What, never? While I can’t be sure of the actual (as opposed to professed) motivations of people who tortured alleged witches, I’m pretty sure that in some cases the ostensible purpose of the torture was to produce repentance and thereby save the witch’s immortal soul. For someone who believes in immortal souls and heaven and hell and so forth, that could easily end up seeming like a transaction that benefits the torturee overall.
(I agree with your second paragraph, though I’m not sure anyone’s doing quite what you describe.)
This exact reasoning was generally used to justify the torture of heretics (not witches) until they recanted. After all, no Earthly torture could ever be worse than eternity in Hell, so most versions of utilitarianism would allow anything that keeps souls out of Hell.
No, you’re right, I’m sure there are cases in which torturers could at least rationalize that what they were doing was for the sake of the woman’s soul.
I’ve often wondered, from my time as a Catholic: if I intentionally kill someone at the moment of their confession/absolution, such that their soul is perfectly clean and I have extremely good reason to believe (within this framework) that their soul will go to Heaven, would I not be making the truly ultimate sacrifice? If my soul then were to go to Hell, I would have been literally as altruistic as it is possible to be, so my soul should go to Heaven; knowing that, however, might make me go to Hell?
Which is why reasonable moral systems ought to be slow to categorize others’ good-faith actions as evil—we never know what we are doing wrong. There’s some chance that future civilizations will think of me as evil for eating meat—hell, they could think of our civilization as barbaric for consuming living beings at all, rather than synthesizing sustenance some other way.
Still, point taken.
Not the truly ultimate sacrifice from that perspective, no. I recommend Jorge Luis Borges’s short fiction Three versions of Judas for further ideas along those lines.