Virtue Ethics and Capital Punishment

From guest blogger, William.

How would a virtue ethicist approach capital punishment? It is a question that is more complicated than it seems. The two other philosophical views that were discussed in class hold clear views on capital punishment. Strict deontologists would support capital punishment. The readings for this class show this. Shafer-Landau spends a lot of time discussing how Kant determined how punishment should be morally speaking. Kant and other deontologists believe that criminals should be treated the same way they treated their victims. Capital punishment to them is morally okay. Consequentialism as well believes that capital punishment is morally okay. Consequentialists would mainly look at the positive consequences of capital punishment, such as criminal deterrence and prevention of further crimes committed by the criminal upon their release from prison. To a consequentialist the death of one person is fine, because it generates greater overall happiness in the community.

Thought experiments help show how much virtue ethics struggles with morality and capital punishment. A man on death row for murder. The man in question lived a virtuous life before committing his crime. Is he still a virtuous man even though he committed a heinous crime? Virtue ethics struggles to come to a concrete decision in this case. This is because virtue ethics does not look at just at a person’s action, but the person’s life as well. Taking the man’s life into consideration, a virtue ethicist must consider the death penalty as punishment for this man’s crime to be unjust and immoral. This example also shows another issue with virtue ethics. It does not explicitly state what makes a virtue a virtue. Is capital punishment in this case justice or revenge? Virtue ethics does not answer this question, because virtue ethics only states being morally right comes from being virtuous. It does not answer conflicts about what actions are virtuous.

There is a group of people that I have neglected in this post so far: the executioners. That is because virtue ethics does not cover the moral dilemma faced by executioners. If executioners killed those who were actively hurting innocent people, there would be no moral quandary. But, executioners kill powerless people. A prisoner on death row is completely helpless. This creates two questions. Are the actions of an executioner virtuous? Does executing prisoners make an executioner a virtuous person? To a virtue ethicist the answer to both of these questions is no. The job of an executioner is to murder a helpless individual. A virtuous person would not kill a handcuffed person, regardless of who they are. This allows us to answer the second question. The actions of an executioner cannot make the executioner a more virtuous person, because the actions undertaken by the executioner are not virtuous.

I personally believe that virtue ethics is quite weak when it comes to these situations. The criticisms of virtue ethics can be seen quite clearly when applying it to something like the death penalty and capital punishment. While consequentialism and deontology have quick answers to this moral question, virtue ethics flounders. This is because virtue ethics mainly describes and does not prescribe. In the end a proper virtue ethicist would be against capital punishment, but their argument would be quite weak.

Morality of Capital Punishment: A Kantian Perspective

From guest blogger, Amara,

The morality of capital punishment has always been up for debate among philosophers. There is always controversy when deciding when or when not it is permissible to take someone’s life as their punishment. The perspective I want to analyze is of the philosopher, Kantan. Though there are some drawback to capital punishment, there are more benefits to having a death penalty, such as increased security, decrease in crime rate, proper justice would be served and also, human life will be more valued and respected.

From a Kantian perspective, I believe that Kant would be all for the death penalty because he strongly believes in justice. Kant had a phrase, lex talionis, which translated into “eye for an eye”, which explains how he felt justice should be served. Kant believes that human beings are rational and autonomous creatures. This meaning that we as humans know what is morally acceptable and what is not. We are able to reason, and eventually come to a decision on our own. Since we are able to self-legislate, we ultimately are the ones responsible for the decisions we make and the consequences that they cause. So if we, as rational and autonomous beings, thought everything out, and still decided do something that is immoral towards someone else, according to lex talionis, the victims have a right to do either the same thing back or something equally as bad to you.

Another principle that Kant had was the principle of humanity which states: always treat a human being (yourself included) as an end, and never as a mere means. An “end” being a species that was part of the moral community, so they deserve proper respect and treatment. A “means” is when you use a person or thing to achieve your own personal goals and show no respect towards them. So when we do something immoral to others that are part of this community, we are violating the principle because we are not treating them as an “end”.

Relating everything back to capital punishment, if a rational and autonomous person decides to kill another rational and autonomous person, then I believe Kant would say that the person who killed them should receive the death penalty, because he broke the principle of humanity, therefore the lex talionis principle comes into play. There are some counter-arguments against this theory, and many think that lex talionis is flawed because of the following:

·         It cannot explain why criminals who intentionally hurt their victims should be punished more than those who inflict the same amount of pain and hurt on people by accident.

·         The punishment given to those who committed the crime is sometimes deeply immoral.

My suggestion to fix the first flaw would be to punish the person based off of their intentions. For example, if someone pushed some off of a building intending to kill them, then they should be killed according to the “eye for an eye” principle. On the other hand, if someone accidently bumped into another person, causing them to fall off the building and die, it was not intentional and therefore should not be punished. If the person is moral, their guilty conscious of accidently killing someone should be enough punishment for them. Another skeptic may ask, how will you find out their intentions? This will be the more difficult part, but I feel like through investigation, our judicial system is able to come to proper conclusions and appropriately serve justice, so we should keep doing just that.

Here is an example for the second flaw: someone burned someone else at the stake, so according to lex talionis, is it morally permissible for someone else to burn the murderer at the stake to serve justice? Many feel like this deeply immoral because it causes someone else, who is an outsider in the situation, to do this immoral act to someone. I believe that though, inflicting death is an immoral action, if a person takes someone else’s life, they deserve to have their life be take from them. On the issue of it being deeply immoral, I feel like the way the murderer dies can be in a less inhumane way, as long as dying is the end result. As for the outsider having to kill someone, I feel like if it is their job to serve justice, and this is the ruling on a case, then the outsider should not be seen as immoral when killing. Or maybe Kant could edit his definition of members in the moral community to when a rational and autonomous person kills another rational and autonomous being, their moral status should be revoked, and they are kicked out of the moral community. Thus, it is morally permissible to kill them.