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C. S. Lewis Theory Of Punishment

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During this session, we discussed cases that may require us to act against our conscience, and what medical providers can do when faced with such situation. Three cases that were presented were hymenoplasty in minor, providing birth control medication, and administration of medication that will hasten patient’s death in end-of-life care.

One of the questions that I ran into while reflecting on this session was the distinction between conscience and morality. Some define conscience as innate quality that operates under one’s rule of moral beliefs and principles. Then how does one develop these beliefs and principles that guide conscience? Is it through education and exposure, or is there an innate component to this as well? This is not related to the topic, but when considering atrocious acts done to Jews during holocaust, did people who committed these crimes have no sense of wrong or evil in their conscience? Or were they just suppressing it.

When discussing the birth control pill, I had a lot of questions for myself. …show more content…

Lewis in one of the assigned articles, and I read the essay where the quote was extracted from. This essay is about the theory of punishment. In the essay, C.S. Lewis argues against the use of humanitarian theory of punishment, which views the guilty person as one with pathological disease that needs to be cured. According to C.S. Lewis, humanitarian theory of punishment treats the guilty person as a morally inferior who is “put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” The “tyranny” in the quote is referring to this act of treating other humans as morally inferior. C.S. Lewis argues for the retributive theory of punishment which states that the punishment is delivering justice that the criminal deserves. That way, a guilty person is “treated a s a human person made in God’s image” who “should have known

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