NCJ Number
105047
Journal
Philosophy and Public Affairs Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Dated: (Spring 1985) Pages: 115-148
Date Published
1985
Length
34 pages
Annotation
On the issue of capital punishment, there is a clear clash of moral intuitions: some feel that justice requires payment in kind and that murderers should die, others feel deeply that the state ought not be in the business of putting people to death.
Abstract
Those in favor of capital punishment base their arguments on such principles as deterrence, retributive justice, and lex talionis. Those favoring abolition cite the worse injustice of the death penalty. Arguments for either side that are incompatible with the intuitions of the other are unlikely to persuade anyone. Since there is truth to both sides, the conflicting arguments are easily refutable leaving nothing but opposing intuitions. An analysis of proportional retributive justice accounts for the justice of executing murderers. However, while a punishment may be deserved and just, like the use of torture or rape to punish torturers or rapists, the death penalty may simply be too horrible a punishment to tolerate in a civilized society. Placing the death penalty in the same category as torture and refusing to do it even when it is deserved continues the taming of the human species that we call civilization. Thus, the abolition of capital punishment is part of the civilizing mission of modern states. 41 footnotes. (Author abstract modified).