Capital Punishment Capital Punishment is regarded by most as a successful deterrent to murder, but that is because these people don’t look at it as it is applied. According to retributivists such as Kant and Van Den Haag the guilty deserves to be punished. On the other hand, people against the death penalty like Bedau think that the death penalty is just as much an effective deterrent as life in prison. The most famous retributivist Kant, states that the guilty ought to get punished because they chose to act wrongly, and by punishing them, we are respecting them as a moral agents. This occurs because humans are given the ability to reason and act morally and thus if we don’t punish them we are not treating them as moral agents.
One, Kant argues that a punishment must fit the crime. He would argue that the degree of suffering inflicted on the victim should be inflicted on the perpetrator. Two, if one commits a crime, he is exposing himself to the danger of his actions. If crime were to become universalized, and therefore acceptable, what is... ... middle of paper ... ... way, to prove that our principles, based on perception, can be rationally applied. Because of this inability to prove our rational perception and thus a moral principle based on that perception, we are unable to demonstrate whether our motives are truly correct.
As little children we are taught that two wrong do not make a right, yet in our society, punishment goes against this fundamental rule. The question of bringing justice to a criminal through Machiavellian punishment needs to be reviewed because of this paradox that arises in human thought. Hubbard disagreed with Machiavelli and said that, "We are punished by our sins, not for them." Guilt of the sins committed punishes the criminal. Depending on how heinous the crime was a different level of guilt will be forced on the crook.
He even goes as far to claim that just as a winner of a contest has a right to a prize, a murderer has a right to be executed. Despite the fact that retributivism is not a position that I maintain, I agree with Perlmutter in his claim that social utility cannot be used to settle the debate about capital punishment. At the same time, I do not believe that retributivism justifies the death penalty either. In Martin Perlmutter's essay "Desert and Capital Punishment," he attempts to illustrate that social utility is a poor method of evaluating the legitimacy of it. Perlmutter claims that a punishment must be "backward looking," meaning that it is based on a past wrongdoing.
Feinburg (1994, cited in: Easton, 2012: 4) says that punishment is “a symbolic way of getting back at the criminal, of expressing a kind of vindictive resentment”. When punishing an offender there are two key principles that determine the kind of punishment. These are the Retributivism response and the Reductivist response. The first principle, Retributivism, focuses on punishing the offence using 'denunciation' where they denounce the crime that has been committed so society knows they have done wrong, and it also uses 'just deserts' where the equity 'eye for an eye' is the main idea. The second principle, Reductivism, believes that deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation is the best strategy to use to punish, its aim is to reduce crime and use punishment to serve a purpose.
There is no justification whatsoever as to why a criminal activity should be paid with another crime, because that is exactly what capital punishment does. In addition, executing a criminal because he/she killed another person is like an act of revenge, yet vengeance has no place in our justice system and a wrong cannot be paid with a wrong. Therefore, let us note that, killing a criminal does not bring back the life of the victims, and it is just losing another life (Hanks 120). Therefore, pain cannot be healed through vengeance by capital punishment and so let us apply other punishment other than capital punishment because it brings no difference after the criminal has been put to death (Carpenter 60). Consequently, killing criminals cannot prevail over a crime nor bring back the life of the person who was killed by the person convicted of
Kant would be in favor of killing the offender who has committed the crime; He believes there is no parallel between death and the most miserable life. According to Kant’s speech ‘there is no equality of crime’. This speech can be interrupted to a degree that Kant would oppose atonement and approve punishment (Capital Punishment). On the other hand, Aristotle argument places reliance on the equality between two individuals. Aristotle once wrote ‘while no form of punishment can restore the goods taken by a murderer to his or her victim, it is theoretically possible to fulfill both the demands of justice that no agent get what he or she does not deserve as the result of unjust transactions, as well as exact a punishment in proportion with the harm caused by a murderer.
Honderich’s analysis of the main justifications of punishment centers on: those who believe that the offender deserves to be chastised for his or her crime. They justify punishment by appealing to desert. Such views are considered backward-looking and retributive in nature. The justification of punishment on forward-looking factors justifies punishment for its ability to prevent and reduce crime. Therefore, through punishment the offender is capable of reform and rehabilitation.
People may try to justify its use by claiming it can be used to gain critical information or in similar situations; this is a feeble attempt to use possible results in order to justify the terrible use of torture as a means of getting there. To deontology, torture is morally wrong, and more than that, it is always morally wrong. There is no situation in which torture should be used, period. The way torture grossly outstrips people’s human autonomy and right to be treated as ends in themselves makes it a moral evil in the eyes of deontology. In addition, torture’s maxim of allowing for one person to harm another for gain is also not universalizable, making it an even more morally corrupt action.
In this case they will analyze how torture can be used as a helpful interrogation tool to the United States or if it is an inhumane method. Deontological ethics or Kantianism is a theory that states you must act on duty and also the morality of action by humans. Deon a Greek word meaning duty and “logos” meaning logic. This specific ethical viewpoint focuses on logic... ... middle of paper ... ... of the main three ethical viewpoints in normative ethics. Initially it can be described as emphasizing virtues, one’s moral character.