tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post1395886709042790168..comments2024-03-29T04:58:54.003-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: In defense of capital punishmentEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-1231557849503007762011-10-02T19:36:58.438-07:002011-10-02T19:36:58.438-07:00Mark, if you will go back and read my Sept 30 4:21...Mark, if you will go back and read my Sept 30 4:21 comment carefully, you will see that I DID show the natural law basis. To repeat myself: natural law provides to the state the authority that the state needs to carry out its primary functions. It's primary function (considered in general) is to safeguard and promote the common good; considered in detail, one such common good is justice, so its primary duty is to protect justice, and restore justice when disrupted. Proportional punishment constitutes that restoration by its very nature. <br /><br />Is there something about Genesis 9:6 that sounds like God limits this warrant of authority to only certain special cases?Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74653588211813639822011-10-02T11:12:53.717-07:002011-10-02T11:12:53.717-07:00BGC Nails it:
“So modern 'thinkers' arriv...BGC Nails it:<br /><br />“So modern 'thinkers' arrive on the scene having rejected the vast submerged iceberg of the natural and the spontaneous, and having isolated virtue (ethics) from the true and the beautiful, and they tackle an issue like the death penalty by considering it on the assumption that all previous generations were evil fools and a few minutes of sensible consideration should be able to supersede them. <br /><br />“And so we discover that the death penalty is evil, and all of humanity before a few decades ago, and ninety something percent of humanity now, is evil... <br /><br />“Wow!”<br /><br />That pretty much sums it up, and Avery Cardinal Dulles, putting it into the context of Catholic teaching, wrote in 2004: <br /><br />“The reversal of a doctrine as well established as the legitimacy of capital punishment would raise serious problems regarding the credibility of the magisterium. Consistency with scripture and long-standing Catholic tradition is important for the grounding of many current teachings of the Catholic Church; for example, those regarding abortion, contraception, the permanence of marriage, and the ineligibility of women for priestly ordination. If the tradition on capital punishment had been reversed, serious questions would be raised regarding other doctrines….”<br /><br />(Catholic teaching on the Death penalty. In E.C. Owens, J.D. Carlson & E.P. Elshtain (Eds.). Religion and the death penalty, (pp. 23-30). Cambridge, England: Eerdmans Publishing. (p. 26)David H. Lukenbillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00180602208280066862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-47504302991688439082011-10-01T22:14:52.458-07:002011-10-01T22:14:52.458-07:00CS Lewis often pointed out the Christianity was ad...CS Lewis often pointed out the Christianity was added to and a completion of natural law and good paganism. <br /><br />Therefore much of The Good, most, was taken for granted as being obvious, spontaneous, inborn. <br /><br />The anciently conceived Good was a unity of virtue, truth a beauty. <br /><br />So modern 'thinkers' arrive on the scene having rejected the vast submerged iceberg of the natural and the spontaneous, and having isolated virtue (ethics) from the true and the beautiful, and they tackle an issue like the death penalty by considering it on the assumption that all previous generations were evil fools and a few minutes of sensible consideration should be able to supersede them. <br /><br />And so we discover that the death penalty is evil, and all of humanity before a few decades ago, and ninety something percent of humanity now, is evil... <br /><br />Wow! <br /><br />I look around at the world of careerists, expedience merchants and intellectual pygmies who make these amazing moral discoveries such as the evilness of the death penalty, these pundits and pub debaters who claim to have superseded the justice of the ages (the great philosophers, the Saints and martyrs)- and am simply stunned at the mismatch. <br /><br />It really is bizarre that the most self-indulgent and hedonistic generations to inhabit the planet should regard themselves as *moral* experts and exemplars - of all things!Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-86482658444448414292011-10-01T18:58:41.667-07:002011-10-01T18:58:41.667-07:00Tony,
Whether or not natural law reveals it is ju...Tony,<br /><br />Whether or not natural law reveals it is just what we are discussing, so it's not much help to me if you just assert that P, and say that natural law reveals it, when you've not really given any actual argument with logical structure that supports the proposition you are saying is true. <br /><br />You said it's been revealed. Since I'm in the dark about this, please show me what content of the deposit of faith necessarily entails that death penalty is morally justifiable in our current circumstances. I'm all ears. <br /><br />.MarkMarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-70487450186178691592011-10-01T17:04:28.370-07:002011-10-01T17:04:28.370-07:00Ugh. So they don't care that the Church has p...Ugh. So they don't care that the Church has pretty much explicitly said "killing humans is not intrinsically evil", they are willing to defy Church doctrine. Seems no longer like an odd but interesting philosophical approach to rock solid Catholicism, but an odd approach to something <i>no longer</i> Catholicism at all.Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-39388916094498720062011-10-01T14:31:54.308-07:002011-10-01T14:31:54.308-07:00You might also take a look at my earlier exchange ...You might also take a look at my earlier exchange with Tollefsen from several years ago (linked to above), in which he explicitly says that "there can be no intentional killing of anybody -- such killing would always be contrary to the good of life" and that capital punishment is therefore "always and everywhere wrong, not just prudentially wrong here and now." Again, this is standard "new natural law" doctrine. Which is one reason (among many others) that the "new" natural law of Grisez, Finnis, George, Boyle, Tollefsen, et al. has nothing to do with the classical natural law theory of Aquinas and other Scholastics.Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-790840430599132252011-10-01T14:25:47.621-07:002011-10-01T14:25:47.621-07:00rmac, I truly doubt that Tollefsen wants to say th...<i>rmac, I truly doubt that Tollefsen wants to say that intentionally killing a human being is intrinsically evil.</i><br /><br />Tony, that <i>is</i> in fact his view, and -- notoriously -- the view of other "new natural law" theorists of the Grisez-Finnis school, who go well beyond anything JP2 ever said. The implications are, of course, pacifistic, though they jump through some logical hoops and creatively reinterpret the doctrine of double effect in order to salvage just war theory. The result is totally implausible, but that is indeed their view. See Steven Long's piece, linked to in my latest post, for more details.Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-920281642112703352011-10-01T13:59:25.951-07:002011-10-01T13:59:25.951-07:00rmac, I truly doubt that Tollefsen wants to say th...rmac, I truly doubt that Tollefsen wants to say that intentionally killing a human being is intrinsically evil. If it were, then he would have given a MUCH different argument. For example, he seems to have no problem with the idea of killing murderers, as JPII put it in Evangelium Vitae, when that is necessary for the safety of others. That would be impossible to say if he thought that killing were intrinsically evil. Furthermore, he would not bother to get into all the little points he does: once you have proven that it is intrinsically evil, the rest of the article would be needless blather. Finally, such a position is squarely AGAINST BOTH the 4000 year Judeo-Christian tradition AND against John Paul II's explicitly stated position affirming that tradition as definitive. No conservative Catholic, particularly one who wants to skirt the standard traditional teaching by using JPII's Evangelium Vitae's discussion of the death penalty, is going to directly defy EV and say that intentionally killing humans is intrinsically evil.Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-87838757790400088502011-10-01T13:41:48.460-07:002011-10-01T13:41:48.460-07:00I'm just not sure whether or not a person can ...<i> I'm just not sure whether or not a person can deserve death as earthly punishment from other human beings- </i><br /><br />Either the "from other human beings" is somehow adding to the punishment itself, so that the punishment coming from humans is <i>worse</i> than coming from (??? nature?, angels?, God?, I don't know); OR, what you are not sure of is that humans have the authority to carry out the punishment, even if they have the authority to carry out other punishments. <br /><br />The latter concern is SPECIFICALLY what I addressed: humans DO have that authority, both because natural law demands it and because God said so. You suggested that it must be revealed by God, He must be the one that says humans are to kill X, Y, or Z. It HAS been revealed by God. So that boxed is checked.Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-84032914637275556632011-10-01T11:46:47.421-07:002011-10-01T11:46:47.421-07:00Oops, I see that Prof. Feser has a new post that m...Oops, I see that Prof. Feser has a new post that may address this very objection.rmacnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60861171421033170232011-10-01T11:39:03.481-07:002011-10-01T11:39:03.481-07:00Tony,
Thank you for the response.
I agree with y...Tony,<br /><br />Thank you for the response.<br /><br />I agree with you that killing a man is not intrinsically wrong. <br /><br />However, my point is that simply appealing to proportionate punishment isn't enough to establish this, since the same reasoning could be used to justify rape as punishment. But that's how I read Prof. Feser's argument: I took him to mean that in order to establish the moral permissibility of capital punishment it is sufficient to show that capital punishment is a proportionate to the crime. This I disagree with. (And I could also be reading him incorrectly.)<br /><br />And it seems that Tollefson does indeed think that it intrinsically wrong to intentionally kill another human being (which I agree, seems to border on extreme pacifism). So I think to convince him otherwise, a reason independent of proportionate punishment will have to given.<br /><br />Ianrmacnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44170914684404331452011-10-01T05:36:51.234-07:002011-10-01T05:36:51.234-07:00Capital punishment is, then, natural law - but is ...<i>Capital punishment is, then, natural law - but is it forbidden by Christianity? Very obviously *not* - Christianity is 2000 years old, and there were Christian societies in history vastly more devout that this one - none of these prohibited capital punishment.</i><br /><br />How many of those societies also had slavery? How about provide women the right to vote (or voting at all)? How about freedom of speach? Or freedom of religion?<br /><br /><i>The evidence is really overwhelming that capital punishment is just.</i><br /><br />Really? What evidence is that?StoneTopnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-51944529415629882322011-09-30T23:20:38.386-07:002011-09-30T23:20:38.386-07:00Tony,
I understand, though I don't entirely a...Tony,<br /><br />I understand, though I don't entirely agree, with the premise that "we cannot in principle rule out the death penalty because by doing so we would in principle be demanding that justice be forsaken."<br /><br />And I understand that Prof Feser's ideas in his essay deal with the principle of the matter.<br /><br />But, when bringing up the idea of accidents, it caught my attention because the term is often too broadly used to have the impact it should, especially in a system where political ambitions and publicity play a role in deciding what happens in particular cases. I would argue such instances are not accidents but something else entirely.<br /><br />Which is my main problem with this issue. The system appears so terribly damaged and prejudiced that I can't even begin to consider whether or not this issue is morally right until I have some confidence that the system itself is, or at least tries to be.<br /><br />I'm not legal scholar, so I can't comment on your idea that the "liberal mindset" is the cause of our troubles aside from saying I'm skeptical of many sweeping generalizations, that being one of them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-52558600656734851772011-09-30T23:01:39.407-07:002011-09-30T23:01:39.407-07:00Capital punishment seems (very obviously) to be a ...Capital punishment seems (very obviously) to be a spontaneous human response, in accordance with natural law - it has been the punishment for some severe crimes in all human societies until recently, and still is in most of the world. <br /><br />(Another severe punishment is ancient societies was exile - seldom used now - this was de facto capital punishment in many circumstances.)<br /><br />Capital punishment is, then, natural law - but is it forbidden by Christianity? Very obviously *not* - Christianity is 2000 years old, and there were Christian societies in history vastly more devout that this one - none of these prohibited capital punishment. <br /><br />The evidence is really overwhelming that capital punishment is just. (And this is leaving aside all expedient arguments, which also support capital punishment). <br /><br />So why the debate? Moral insanity. Our society cannot any longer even understand very obvious things, but perpetually raises incoherent objects to whatever is spontaneous and natural; and, conversely, perpetually explores and advocates whatever is unspontaneous and unnatural. <br /><br />In sum, the opposition to capital punishment is anti-Good (i.e. it is evil); just as the related notion of pacifism is evil, and attacking the family is evil. <br /><br />The clever trick of the anti-capital punishment lobby has been to reverse the onus of proof - so that capital punishment must be proven against all real and conceivable objections, as if it was an untried innovation. Whereas it is actually the abolition of capital punishment that is the untried innovation.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-82102056968834443262011-09-30T17:49:42.630-07:002011-09-30T17:49:42.630-07:00Great article as always! I have had several discus...Great article as always! I have had several discussions on this subject with Mark Shea. Shea proclaimed that anyone who did not agree with the principle laid out by JPII in Evangelium Vitae was a dissenter to the Catholic faith. He actually compares it to dissenting from the Church's teaching regarding contraception, if you can believe that. I challenged him on this matter recently on the Patheos website, where it has been announced that he will be a new member of the panel there. The link to the debate I had with him can be found below. After I pointed his error out to him, he then turned to ad-hominem attacks. I find it amazing that even after I presented to him the basic principles upon which the act of punishment rests, he still will not budge on his condemnation of fellow Catholics. As Dr. Long has pointed out, many Catholics today have a reductionist perception of EV. They take it in isolation from the tradition of the Church. Thanks for your articles Dr. Feser. <br /><br />http://www.patheos.com/community/theanchoress/2011/09/28/mark-sheas-a-movin-to-patheos/James Bellisariohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01786370386909499672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-1358349933047171692011-09-30T16:50:25.291-07:002011-09-30T16:50:25.291-07:00Tony,
However, now that I correct myself, I DO al...Tony,<br /><br />However, now that I correct myself, I DO also reject that it is morally permissible for persons to marry another person of the same sex, just as I also reject that, it is morally permissible to kill another person as punishment (except when it has been divinely revealed that we should).<br /><br />.MarkMarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-44676585317645736592011-09-30T16:48:53.485-07:002011-09-30T16:48:53.485-07:00Tony,
I made a typo. The appropriate selection s...Tony, <br /><br />I made a typo. The appropriate selection should have read:<br /><br />[It would be akin to me rejecting NOT that people are not morally permitted to marry persons of the same sex BUT rejecting that there just is a right to be married to a person of the same sex.] it previously read, 'rejecting that there just is no right to be married...'<br /><br />.MarkMarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-69523787202579167762011-09-30T16:46:16.315-07:002011-09-30T16:46:16.315-07:00Tony,
[your issue has to do with not whether John...Tony,<br /><br />[your issue has to do with not whether John deserves to be punished, but whether men ought to be the ones to punish. I take it that staying at the general level, you don't disagree that John deserves to be punished.]<br /><br />You're right that I don't disagree that John deserves to be punished. However, my issue is not whether men ought to be the ones to punish. <br /><br />I agree that men ought to punish men. <br />I don't think that my belief, 'men ought to punish men', implies, 'men may punish other men by killing them'. I mean, it's obvious that one doesn't imply the other. So, the first seems true, the the second seems just false to me. <br /><br />Now, if you meant that I just disagree that men ought to be the ones to punish (when the punishment deserved is death), then you are right, sort of. I'm just not sure whether or not a person can deserve death as earthly punishment from other human beings- so I'm questioning the very 'deserving'. It would be akin to me rejecting NOT that people are not morally permitted to marry persons of the same sex BUT rejecting that there just is no right to be married to a person of the same sex. <br /><br />However, when it is 'divine' punishment, the justice of God, then I'm convinced that every single person who ever committed a mortal sin deserves death. I mean, if we deserve eternal damnation, how could we not also deserve death (insofar as, we necessarily have to die in order to go to hell) ?<br /><br /><br />Whether or not the human earthly punishment and the divine justice are connected in a way that would give us good reason to think that the death penalty is morally permissible, and that we have reasonable good methods of judging when it is the case, I'm not sure. I'll need an argument to accept this. Feel free to give one. <br /><br />.MarkMarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-86557197007885124112011-09-30T16:36:02.713-07:002011-09-30T16:36:02.713-07:00And yet, we have anecdotal numbers supposedly form...<i>And yet, we have anecdotal numbers supposedly forming a reason to shy away from the death penalty</i><br /><br />More then just anecdotal. The data on many aspects of the legal system show numerous instances where convictions are questionable (such as unreliable eye witnesses) show that there are serious flaws in the way we go about persecuting people.<br /><br /><i>That's mere data, not information. We don't know how many people they got "exonerated" on technical grounds versus actual - you know -INNOCENCE, as such.</i><br /><br />True... but it doesn't fall to people to prove their innocence, it falls to the state to prove guilt. If the state fails to do so then that is the end of the matter.<br /><br /><i>we are unable to compare it to how many people are right now dead because of the lack of effective death penalty</i><br /><br />Sure we are. We can look at the rates of such crimes between death penalty states and non-death penalty states. If the death penalty is effective at deterring the crimes you describe then the rate of such crimes should be lower in death penalty states.<br /><br /><i>You can let an innocent man out of jail, but you cannot give him back his 25 years behind bars, his family, his wife, his respected status in his profession, and his peace of mind lost from being FALSELY accused, wrongly tried, and unjustly imprisoned. Therefore, it is wrong to put a man in prison.</i><br /><br />At least he has his life. The same cannot be said for a dead man. You also, inadvertently, bring up the issue of how our society treats former convicts.<br /><br /><i>It is, actually, morally understood TO BE an accident: the state didn't intend the result that an innocent man be killed. </i><br /><br />Would you say the same if it were you? How about your brother/sister? How about your child?<br /><br /><i>We ascribe all accidents that bring evil to God's providence, and trust that God is both totally in control of all good and evil so that no evil is permitted that He does not plan for and intend to account for perfectly.</i><br /><br />So "kill them all and let God sort them out"?<br /><br />You are really opening up the metaphorical can of worms there... after all can someone really be doing evil if they are acting as your deity intended?StoneTopnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-60920516765200531272011-09-30T16:31:47.483-07:002011-09-30T16:31:47.483-07:00rmac, until Dr. Feser comes in to answer your ques...rmac, until Dr. Feser comes in to answer your question, I'll give you some food for thought: <br /><br />Nobody except the absolutely most extreme of extreme pacifists think that it is wrong to use lethal force to defend life, yours or another innocent life. Therefore, killing a man is cannot be considered <i>intrinsically</i> evil. (Compare this with the traditional teaching about rape: If a man holds a gun at an innocent victim Jill and says he will kill Jill unless you rape Betty, morality says that rape is intrinsically wrong, and I must not rape Betty <i>no matter what</i> that evil jerk does to Jill. Not even to save a life.) If "killing this man" was intrinsically wrong, then we could not do it even to save a life. It would be wrong regardless of circumstances, and therefore wrong even when that might save a life.Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5897948493720360982011-09-30T16:21:50.125-07:002011-09-30T16:21:50.125-07:00Mark, your issue has to do with not whether John d...Mark, your issue has to do with not whether John deserves to be punished, but whether men ought to be the ones to punish. I take it that staying at the general level, you don't disagree that John deserves to be punished. <br /><br />Joseph Bottum took up your point in an article at <i>First Things</i> about 2 years ago, I think. His argument is that while John deserves death for ultimate justice, man is not the arbiter and guarantor of ultimate justice. So there is no conclusion that it is man that ought to be the agent of John's death. <br /><br />The answer comes in 2 parts: one on the level of Scriptural authority, one at the natural law level. First, Genesis 9:6 has God saying "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man." It is not only "his blood shall be shed", but "by man" as well. Secondarily, in Romans Paul makes it clear that the state is God's delegate in punishment: "avenging" evil with the sword. <br /><br />Although all authority is from God, it is FROM Him when He delegates it, and this He does with the state. In making man to be a social animal, destined for love of neighbor, and thus having such a thing as a common good, He made man need organization of society, and this requires government. Therefore, under natural law, government receives from God the duty and authority to govern society for the sake of the common good. To the extent that the government has the care of the common good, it by nature holds the authority so far as that common good can be served. God's grant of authority extends to those actions necessary to fulfill its purpose, the care of the common good under its supervision. <br /><br />St. Thomas explains that a crime upsets the order of justice: instead of sumbitting his will to the state (in a situation where he is obliged to do so) he has satisfied his OWN will and served his personal good. [Justice is a kind of equality, and the criminal has exceeded on one side (his own good) and allowed a deficiency on the other side (the common good) so that justice is in disarray.] The remedy to justice, then, is for the state to <i>impose</i> upon him something that naturally opposes his will (an evil) proportionate to the degree his will repudiates the common good. When a man opposes the common good so much as to assassinate a public official to damage the state itself, there can be no doubt that the severity of his crime warrants death. But further, there can be no doubt that the justice being served is the justice that the state has the care of. Therefore, under the presumption that God delegates to the state such authority as to give the state integrity, the state DOES have the authority to use the death penalty. It is precisely with respect to the common good, justice, under its purview that the state seeks to remedy justice by imposing the proportionate punishment of death on the offender. <br /><br />This punishment belongs to the state's authority by reason of integrity: God generally wills each creature to have what it needs to fulfill its purpose. And this He revealed to us positively in Scripture.Tonynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-46425059762067988392011-09-30T14:38:53.606-07:002011-09-30T14:38:53.606-07:00In my last paragraph, I said:
[If it does, then I...In my last paragraph, I said:<br /><br />[If it does, then I would reject such a 'deserving', just on the basis of my own consideration that, 'it's not the case that person may kill other persons for wrongdoing'.]<br /><br />I would probably qualify this. I would say that it's not the case that human beings may punish other human beings by killing them. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's impossible for it to be morally permissible for one human being to kill another for the sake of punishment; there would just have to be special circumstances- God would have to tell us to do so. <br /><br />However, since I add this last qualification, I am interested in what the arguments there are for the claim that God actually does tell us to punish others by killing them, or does tell us to do something which entails or includes such punishing/killing. I suppose this would involve citing the relevant passages from Scripture. <br /><br />Best,<br />MarkMarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24187643528574816432011-09-30T14:09:39.589-07:002011-09-30T14:09:39.589-07:00Dr Feser writes,
"But since a human being ca...Dr Feser writes,<br /><br />"But since a human being can deserve punishment, and a punishment ought to be proportional to the offense, it follows that he can deserve death if his offense is grave enough."<br /><br />I take your argument to be: <br /><br />I. Human beings deserve punishment for wrongdoing. <br />II. They deserve punishment proportional to the wrongdoing. <br /><br />And in a particular case, I suppose this argument would unfold like this: <br /><br />III. John performed offense S.<br />IV. John deserves punishment proportional to offense S. <br />V. The punishment proportional to offense S is being killed. <br />VI. John deserves to be killed. <br /><br /><br />So..I think I would just disagree with II. I don't agree that all persons deserve punishment (FROM OTHER HUMANS) proportional to the wrongdoing. And I would just disagree with this because I'm not convinced that each person who does something wrong (to the Nth degree) deserves to be punished by another human being to the nth degree. <br /><br />Also, is deserving like 'rights', in these sense that we can reduce the normative claims of 'rights' talk to claims about what other people are morally required to do, or how they are morally required to treat me. Would the fact that I deserve something make it the case that any other person actually has the moral requirement to give me what I deserve? <br /><br />If it does, then I would reject such a 'deserving', just on the basis of my own consideration that, 'it's not the case that person may kill other persons for wrongdoing'. <br /><br />Best,<br />MarkMarknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-39900155624420200592011-09-30T13:29:56.097-07:002011-09-30T13:29:56.097-07:00Articles like this one are refreshingly welcome in...Articles like this one are refreshingly welcome in a social and political atmosphere that appears to be continually moving farther away from the essential public safety task of protecting the innocent.<br /><br />As a Catholic convert understanding that capital punishment was an integral aspect of Church teaching in relation to protecting the innocent from the aggressor, and as a former criminal—thief and robber—who spent many years in maximum security federal and state prisons knowing many people well deserving of capital punishment, I was somewhat confused early in my RCIA process to read how the American Bishops were seeking to abolish capital punishment.<br /><br />That led to an extensive study of the issue, culminating in my book, Capital Punishment & Catholic Social Teaching: A Tradition of Support, and it is an issue playing a central role in my apostolate work through the Lampstand Foundation.<br /><br />Thank you Dr. Feser.David H. Lukenbillhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00180602208280066862noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-69523884078921479432011-09-30T12:39:57.186-07:002011-09-30T12:39:57.186-07:00Prof. Feser,
You write: “But since a human being ...Prof. Feser,<br /><br />You write: “But since a human being can deserve punishment, and a punishment ought to be proportional to the offense, it follows that he can deserve death if his offense is grave enough. The fact that he, through his own freely chosen actions, has come to merit capital punishment is precisely what gives sense and intelligibility to the act of inflicting this punishment on him.<br /><br />“When the human dignity that Tollefsen rightly champions is considered in light of the principle of proportionality, it is clear that the intentional killing of a human being is not intrinsically wrong.”<br /><br />I was wondering if you could elaborate on this. It seems to me that you could use a similarly-framed argument to posit that, say, it is not intrinsically wrong to punish a rapist by raping him. One could argue that ‘in light of the principle of proportionality, it is clear that raping a human being is not intrinsically wrong’ in order to justify rape as a morally permissible punishment for a rapist. But this is false since rape is intrinsically wrong irrespective of whether it is used as punishment or not, so clearly, the principle of proportionality is not the <i>only</i> criterion to determine whether a punishment is intrinsically wrong or not.<br /><br />In other words, it seems that the principle of proportionality is a necessary but not sufficient condition to establish whether a punishment is morally permissible. In addition to proportionality, one would need to show that the action being considered as punishment is not intrinsically immoral when the action is considered in itself. Tollefson, while probably accepting the principle of proportionality, clearly believes that intentionally killing a human being is intrinsically immoral. Therefore, it seems to me that one must first establish that it is not intrinsically immoral <i>without</i> relying on the principle of proportionality. Once that is established, one can combine it with the principle of proportionality to show that capital punishment is just.<br /><br />Thank you.rmacnoreply@blogger.com