ABSTRACT
This chapter unpacks the conceptual substance of the benchmarks in a way that can usefully inform the understanding of degrading treatment's scope of meaning. The 'feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority' aspect of the jurisprudence, which might seem to be a mere preface to the core benchmarks of degradation, can be seen to indicate an important distinction. In the Article 3 jurisprudence, humiliation and debasement tend to come as a package. The observations as to semantic meaning only provide initial parameters for the interpretation of humiliation and debasement. Literature on humiliation includes a distinction between feeling humiliated and being humiliated. It uses language like the 'emotion' or 'emotional experience' of humiliation, and the 'state', 'social situation', and 'social fact' of humiliation. Literature on humiliation also includes Margalit's analysis, associates two key states with the experience and social fact of humiliation: powerlessness and exclusion.
