Categorical Imperiality In Cold Blood

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I choose the question; “Is putting a serial killer to death ethically sound when guilt has been established with absolute certainty?”. I choose this question because of how much I feel towards anyone being put on a death sentence. My junior year of high school I read a book titled; In Cold Blood, written by Truman Capote. In this novel two men are sentenced to death for the murder of a Kansas family. It tells of their thoughts and emotions while on death row. While understanding that the two men in the novel, based off of a real event, and the absolute certainty of the serial killer in the stated question are condemned to death, I also understand that there have been other people throughout history condemned to death who were either accused
According to chapter nine, Categorical Imperative says that in order for something to be considered morally acceptable you have to question whether or not it is right for everyone in the world to do. According to chapter ten, the Categorical Imperative has to do with “the inherent worth and dignity of human beings and that the criminal 's evil deed draws the punishment upon himself because in doing so he has decided that this is the way people are to be treated (5)”. Kantianism states that; “after an act is deemed moral or immoral, outcome doesn’t matter anymore, only the rules or the acts themselves” (2). The Kantian response to question of whether the imposed death sentenced it ethical or not would be; because the act of murder in deemed immoral in most societies, then the outcome of whether or not to sentence him to death, does not matter. Only the rule of, you should not commit murder, and the act of murder that the killer committed, an immoral act, is what matters. The ‘maxim’, “A short, pithy statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct” (3), would be; is it okay to put someone to death for the murder or a more than one individual? Although this question can be asked universally, the answer itself is not universalized. Every culture has different views on what it views as acceptable or not in their society, and so not everyone would say

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