Capital Punishment

You should read also The Lottery, another really good short story. A reason isn't really given fully for those deaths either, merely hinted at, but there are some that are clearly not acceptable to the author such as "let's do it this way because it's the way we've always done it" or "we're scared of change" or "better him than me." The idea of utilitarian ethics is also addressed in the short story. The difference with the Lottery and perhaps the situation that Orwell was in is that they were dealing with oppressive governments; The Lottery was loosely based on the WWII atrocities.

I think it really depends on your belief systems concerning human nature--whether you think it is innately "good" or innately "evil." And that's a difficult question to answer. Do human beings ever get to the point where they become so incredibly evil that the "good" left is not worth saving? Or at least to the point where it outweighs the good so much that it eradicates any good the person might have done in life? I think also of how difficult it is for some people to ever truly change their ways, and I wonder what the statistics are for what percentage of people in prison "rehabilitation programs" ever make it out and survive without falling back into criminal habits. For some people, doing evil is an addiction.

This is a topic that I am still deciding upon. I've never witnessed an actual capital punishment taking place, which is perhaps why it's difficult for me to fully say for sure. I wonder if those who are in charge of carrying out the punishment experience any kind of psychological trauma from their role in the whole thing. Has anyone ever done a study on it?

when I mention that I've never witnessed it, it's because I wouldn't WANT to witness it, which perhaps has some bearing in the argument against it. When our inner selves draw back in horror, perhaps we do need to rethink our actions.

I second The Lottery. Also, the same author, Shirley Jackson, wrote The Haunting of Hill House, which is an excellent psychological thriller that holds up remarkably well since its publication in 1959.

Capital punishment is a tough issue. I am opposed to it because of the errors in the judicial process that could lead to an innocent person being executed. Philosophically, if someone commits a bad enough crime I don't have a problem with it.

..I recently read that Orwell essay. One of his better efforts. I read many more besides and frankly, I got bored with them. Clear prose is great but in the absence of genuinely dazzling ideas it gets a bit tiresome after a while. Enjoy your dissertation!

Anyway. Capital punishment. A very bad idea. First up, it's more than somewhat dimwitted this practice of killing folk to indicate that killing folk is not a good thing to do.

Second. You are according the state a whole lot of power in allowing it to kill its citizens. Too much.

Third. The authorities who kill are certain of themselves; certain not only of the correctness of the judgment but also of the perfection of their moral sensibility: that what is wrong today must be wrong tomorrow. It is a dogmatic, religious outlook. The conscientious objector imprisoned during wartime is released when the authority becomes ashamed of its former bloodlust. The conscientious objector executed however..

Fourth. It, literally, makes a murderer out of someone (the executioner). If you think upon it, this is no small matter.

Fifth. It is a thoroughly pessimistic practice. In all likelihood a failure of society will have given rise to the criminal act... But let's not concern ourselves with that; let's eliminate the problem (our embarrassment). No second chances. No chance to make amends. No chance to be better.

But yeah, I've no really strong opinions on the matter.

Art:

Just a couple of thoughts:

1) Capital punishment doesn't have to exist merely to teach people that killing is wrong by killing them (a form of general deterrence, I suppose). It certainly serves as specific deterrence as well. And you don't have to apply only utilitarian justifications to it - in many cases, people believe that it is simply what the offender deserves, whether it ever serves a larger purpose.

2) It doesn't make a murderer out of the executioner. A "murder" is an unlawful killing, and an execution pursuant to a judicial process is not "unlawful."

On your remaining points, I find myself in agreement

SP

1) Of course capital punishment also exists so folk can satisfy their lust for vengeance/ feel better about themselves (cos they no longer need to address society's/ their own failings) BUT one would think that punishment that deters should deter in a fashion that is philosophically /logically sustainable.

2 A murderer in my book since I am evoking higher moral laws.

Cheers and thanks Lemex!

Art:

1) Kant argued in The Metaphysics of Morals that one reason the State carries out capital punishment is to keep it from becoming revenge. In other words, it is revenge if the victim's friends or family (or presumably any angry mob) carries it out, but if the State does it by a deliberative process, it is no longer such. He also believed that carrying out the sentence for a crime also ultimately respected the autonomous nature of the criminal, who acted freely in committing the crime.

Then again, Kant never went more than ten miles from his home town.

2) Yes, if you are invoking a higher law (natural law, if you will), then it could still be murder. It wouldn't be murder under any kind of positive law analysis, but I tend to favor natural law myself.

I can't agree with Kant on the first point SP. I would regard it as an act of collective revenge. The second argument is very nearly irresistibly persuasive. It is certainly, like a number of Kant's arguments, beautiful and just 'right' on some level. But if it has some wrongness about it, it is this: I do not believe the wrongdoer acts with meaningful autonomy. I believe (sort of) he is animated by ignorance. Which is to say he has no choice to make, and does not decide to now act morally, now immorally. We might say here: 'hanging is too good for him' but not quite in the way normally meant.

If the wrongdoer doesn't have meaningful autonomy, can any punishment be justified outside of utilitarian considerations?

What about errors in the judicial system?

Google 'wrongly convicted UK'
^ There are umpteen cases of people being wrongly imprisoned and later set free. That is of course the ones the weren't 'hanged'.

I feel that it depends a lot on, not whether you're guilty or not, but more to do with how good a lawyer can you afford.

I am thinking here about the man (I'm useless at remembering names) with a mental age of ten that was convicted of murdering a child - in prison he was treated badly by both his fellow prisoners and the warders, being set about numerous times and held in solitary. Only to discover that not only had he been wrongly convicted but the prosecution had had the evidence all the time that proved his innocence and they knowingly fought this case to prove him guilty (jobs worth). They obviously had no scruples about the murderer still being out there and in a position to murder another child. For once someone was convicted for the crime the police stopped looking for the murderer, believing that he was safely locked-up (I repeat 'jobs worth').

I am against capital punishment for this reason; if someone gets life imprisonment and a mistake has been made then it can be rectified, if a innocent person has been executed than no amount of 'ooops sorry's' can bring them back.

No. That's where the argument leads. Stop the ignoramus from doing more damage... and hope to deter others from choosing to act without autonomy.

A passage from Vonnegut:

'I asked him (my friend Bernard O'Hare) while he was still a DA if he was doing much good putting felons in prison. He said, "No, I think people have more than enough trouble without me piling it on."'