Melissa Mossey
Honors Ethics
Dr. Farley
Capital Punishment
In this essay I will explain the views about capital punishment as expressed by Igor Primoratz, in “Justifying Legal Punishment,” and Stephen Nathanson, in “An Eye for an Eye?”. I will also assert and defend my point of view that capital punishment is wrong, citing several strong utilitarian and Kantian objections.
Igor Primoratz discusses the concept of justice purely for the sake of justice. He believes that fair punishment involves depriving a criminal of the same value of which they have deprived their victims. His view is that human life is not equal to the value of anything else, therefore a murderer must be executed. There is no other way for him to experience a loss in value equal to the victim’s.
Returning to the writings of Immanuel Kant, he suggests that justice is required without concern for outcomes or changing future behavior. We punish for punishment’s sake, not because we hope to deter. This is because we cannot use others as merely a means- using one criminal to deter others would be using them as a means.
Primoratz addresses many of the objections to capital punishment. First, that capital punishment violates the right to life. Primoratz suggests that to support
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What should we do to a rapist? We certainly would not like to hire people to rape those who have raped others. And some crimes would be incredibly difficult to inflict onto a criminal—white collar crime for example. We cannot effectively commit fraud against a person who committed fraud against us. This idea of an eye for an eye is a good one in theory, but very difficult in practice. A less strict interpretation of an eye for an eye might ask us to punish by inflicting an equal amount of suffering in the criminal. This would still require us to engage in some brutal behavior, considering how much suffering some criminals have