Friday, September 16, 2011
Tollefsen on human dignity and capital punishment
At Public Discourse, Chris Tollefsen has an essay that should -- given his treatment of the moral-anthropology question that is necessarily at the heart of any legal-theory enterprise -- be of interest. Tollefsen argues, among other things, that what he calls the "Essential Dignity" view -- i.e., the view that human beings possess "essential, underived, or intrinsic dignity . . . in virtue of the kind of being they are" -- supports (and, if I read him correctly, requires) the conclusion: "no intentional killing of human beings."
Chris is comfortable in action-theory waters that are too deep for me. That said, it seems to me that the "no intentional killing, ever" rule requires a stylized definition of "intentional" -- one that does not include, say, shooting a charging enemy soldier (in, let's assume, the context of a just war) in the chest. (The idea, as I understand it, is that a soldier does not, or need not, "intentionally" kill, because his or her "intent" may be, and should be, to disable, and not to kill.) Also, it is not obvious to me that the Essential Dignity view necessarily includes or travels with a rule that it is per se wrong to intentionally kill a human being. Tollefsen engages closely the claim that a human being may, by virtue of having lost or alienated his or her dignity, deserve to be killed and therefore may be killed. But, could it be that a person may deserve to be killed, and therefore may be killed, without losing or alienating his or her essential dignity? I have always appreciated the argument, in C.S. Lewis's little essay, The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, that respect for the dignity of human beings should lead us to punish those (and only those) who deserve it. (And so, again, the question is whether capital punishment a permissible sanction for those who deserve to be punished.)
Like I said . . . deep waters! (By the way, and in case it matters, unlike both Gov. Perry and Pres. Obama, I oppose capital punishment.) And, I have tried to explore, in this paper, the implications for the capital-punishment debate of what Blessed Pope John Paul II called the "moral truth about the human person."
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/09/tollefsen-on-human-dignity-and-capital-punishment.html
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the
comment feed
for this post.
The "no killing under any circumstances" doctrine would forbid self-defense by any method that could kill, because whether the attacker survives or dies from his wounds is not a matter of the moral law, but of pure chance. "No killing, ever" would have to extend to "no jeopardizing human life, ever."
But I have yet another bone to pick. Are we to infer than anything that does not take life is permissible? Suppose our punishment for murder is to dig a deep hole in the ground, cover the hole with a manhole cover, toss the murderer into this hole, and toss in some food once a day, but otherwise leave him to his fate until death mercifully overcomes him? We didn't kill him, so I guess that sanction would constitute a model act of superior morality.
On the other hand, if in the course of quite ordinary imprisonment the convict is stabbed in a prison fight, and will survive only with extensive surgery which is available only at the Massachusetts General Hospital what do we have to do? And can we bill the cost of his treatment to Medicaid? Note that since his death would constitute an act of murder, it presemably cannot come under the heading of "natural death." Well, unless we count death by murder as natural death. Which of course it is, but that is another debate entirely. Victims of murder do die. Naturally.