Kant, Mill, and Scheler on:
Capital Punishment
When searching for modes of retribution, the morality of the punishment becomes a central issue. Punishments are usually carried out in virtue of the criminal deserving them, and different types of punishments are often debated. One type of punishment is imprisonment where the time imprisoned can vary in amount of years that can range from one year to life indefinitely as the criminals are cut off from the world. The other punishment, capital punishment, is when the crime that the criminal has committed is so severe that they must pay it with their lives. This punishment is more severe, as it is taking the life of a human being and unlike imprisonment, it is something permanent and cannot be undone when it occurs. There have been many arguments regarding capital punishment about how it is immoral of taking life and that if it happens the supports of capital punishment would be no better than the criminal that committed that heinous crime that resulted in the punishment. In this paper, philosophers Mill, Kant, and Scheler will be examined in light of their view of capital punishment; these philosophers below offer their own views on why capital punishment is in fact moral. John Stuart Mill argued for capital punishment as a deterrent and as a way of happiness for the criminal and the victims. Immanuel Kant argued for the good will and as doing it as duty. Max Scheler argued that it is moral in order to achieve the highest value.
The issue for the death penalty is central to the movie “Dead Man Walking” as the conflict was whether the character, Matthew Poncelet, should face the death penalty for his crimes. The movie ended with the death penalty being chosen and with Poncelet’s last word on the day of his execution was, “I just wanna say I think killin' is wrong, no matter who does it, whether it's me or y'all or your government,” as he argues that any killing is wrong and that capital punishment is just the same as murder no matter who does it. However, there have been many other philosophers, that argue that capital punishment is moral. The ethics of capital punishment are best supported by Kant, Mill, and Scheler as they use their own ethics to explain the morality of capital punishment and why it is used on criminals who have taken the lives of others.
John Stuart Mill finds capital punishment to be moral in that he finds the death penalty to work as a deterrent for others, so that the prospect of murder would not look appealing as the criminals would have to face the fact that they could lose their lives if they take others’. To Mill, those who have taken life have made the decision that they have proved themselves to be unworthy of the life that have been bestowed upon themselves and in essence are already dead as “he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself, and that while no other crime that he can commit deprives him of his right to live.” Mill considers the act of murder as the most heinous of crimes, so he figures that the act should be met with swift retribution to show the severity of the crime. Since the criminal in question would be considered dead to society, his public execution would serve as a deterrent to reinforce how wrong murder is and what happens to those that commit it, as they would lose their own life as well to the act. Mill’s utilitarian standard of morality is that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness: wrong as they produce the reverse of happiness.” With this, Mill’s reasoning for capital punishment is that it will provide the most happiness and least amount of pain for those involved as a swift death provides less pain for the criminal than being abandoned alive in a cramped isolated space with no chance of freedom.
Mill would consider long term imprisonment to be an even worse fate than capital punishment, for both the criminal and society as a whole as “between consigning a man to the short pang of a rapid death, and immuring him in a living tomb, there to linger out what may be a long life in the hardest and most monotonus toil” . Since the criminal has already forfeited his life in society there would be no point keeping them alive as one cannot fix what they already forfeited, and it would be cruel isolating them in a closed off space with a lack of liberty, which can be the most important value to a person. To Mill life time imprisonment would be considered torture considering how humans are social creatures in nature and a closed off environment would be miserable for them. It would also cause problems to society as a whole as with keeping the criminal alive after committing such a heinous crime would lessen the severity of the act showing how life is not as valuable if the punishment is not taken seriously and that no proper retribution has taken place. The death penalty, on the other hand, serves more properly as a deterrent being that it ends the life of the condemned in total and to everyone on earth, a life cut short would be terrifying. So, to Mill, capital punishment serves as a way to ensure the greatest amount of happiness and less amount pain for the people involved, including the condemned.
Immanuel Kant found capital punishment to be moral on the ground that it is citizens’ duty to the good will of upholding the death penalty to the value of life. The only, absolute unconditional good in the universe is the good will, and a will is good only when one is striving to do one’s duty. To Kant, the only way for capital punishment to be moral is that it is only done for the sake of the law and not inclination, so doing it for vengeance or for any other reason would not be considered moral and not the right means for the death penalty. So, the only way to use the death penalty morally is to follow the categorical imperative in that we must “act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” This states that we should only perform an action if it is something that we can apply as a rule that everyone should do for their duty. Since the criminal has broken this universal law by applying their contradicting actions, they would be given their rightly due for their immoral actions. Because the criminals are rational beings who have chosen to commit these horrible deeds, they would ask for their due that they rightly deserve as a result for the consequences of their action.
According to Kant the practical imperative is the best way of the treatment of life and how to handle it in how one should “act so you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.” This means that to use the death penalty on any human life, even if it is a condemned one, for any means as either a statement of deterrent or for revenge is not a moral one if it is not done in the name of the law. Kant was also against life imprisonment as criminals would not be given the dignity of their due and are instead using them as a means for some other end. It shows why the criminals in question are to be treated for the death penalty in that they did not treat the people with murder as an end to themselves but as a mean to their own selfish end. We must act as if we are law giving members of a realm of ends in that we must obey the moral laws autonomously; which is to be independent, self-legislating, and under one’s own authority. Capital punishment fits into Kant’s view of retributive justice in that there must be punishment and payment of damage for the harm done. In small time crime, the punishment was a repayment of an amount of money or time in prison that accords to the value of the crime that was committed. The answer to crime then would be to repay what they have taken with their own life, since they have treated the victim’s life as a means instead of an end, they have shown that they have no care for life. To Kant, they are not misunderstood children who have no idea what they have done; they are autonomous rational adults that know what they did, and so must pay for the crime they have committed. To Kant It is our duty to treat the criminal as an end as we would ourselves and give them their due that is expected for them.
Max Scheler considered capital punishment to be moral in that to respect of the highest values. For Scheler, for an action to be moral, the good of an action “must never be the content or material for a realizing act of the will.” In that doing actions for the good of something is not moral and that if they choose capital punishment for the “good” of society instead of doing it the practical reasons then it is not moral. The death penalty should only be used for the supreme value of the situation with the act itself and the positive value that is to come with the death penalty instead of how they want the “good” of the act like some materialistic thing to gain to make the justice system look good. In Scheler’s view “the values of right and wrong or of justice and injustice are the ultimate basis for an objective juridicial order” which is one of the highest values we should all strive to achieve, right below religious values, in our daily lives. To Scheler, for acts to be moral we should all strive to the highest values that we can reach. A value is high when it is more enduring of time, not influenced to divisibility, less grounded to other values, the deeper satisfaction they yield, and are highest when the experience of them is independent of feeling and preferring on something . The highest value, there is to reach, is religious values that is comprised of Holy, Sacred, Human Dignity. The second highest values are spiritual values that are composed of aesthetic, juridical, and philosophical values. To achieve these high values, we must not indulge in the negative lesser values of crime and the unlawful selfishness of taking a life for our own ends. What is most important is upholding our dignity in what we believe in, even if it costs our lives, because as to Scheler religious and spiritual values are above vital values. When a person commits a crime, they disregarded all their values, but most importantly the highest value being their dignity. Scheler believes to give the condemned their dignity and like Kant, that the criminals should be given their due that they deserve, and that the death penalty should not be used for a disvalue like vengeance or as a selfish disvalue like a deterrent. To Scheler capital punishment is moral in that it is the highest value that can be reached when dealing with condemned criminals.
Mill, Kant, and Scheler offer different views on the morality of capital punishment, but the result is still the same in that they all agree that the death penalty is not immoral with each philosopher arguing it for different means. Mill argued that it is for the good, Kant for that it is moral, and Scheler argued that it is for the highest value. I would even say that the use of the death penalty is warranted in how sometimes it is best to end the lives of the criminals who committed murder or even more heinous crimes that have cost the lives of others. My reasoning is more aligned with Mill’s line of reasoning of the death penalty, if a little less. In that for criminals who are imprisoned for life there is no reason to keep them alive and even make them suffer by keeping them locked away from the world that no longer accepts the life they have so viciously thrown away when they destroyed another’s life already. It saves much on resources and of time to end a condemned life than to just prolonged it in a caged cell. It also shows the punishment of such a crime in how that horrendous actions that landed them in the situation is not at all acceptable and act as a deterrence, so that it shows that cruel actions such as rape and murder will lead to your own life being ended as well. Though this is the case, I disagree with Mill’s deposition of the death penalty being dealt right away as there should be some time for the condemned to be able to get their chance to at least get their affairs in order and find some path of redemption for their crime. I am in an agreement with Kant and Scheler in that even the condemned should be given the dignity that they did not give to others before their death as they are still rational autonomous adults. The action of murder is a crime and one that is deserving of punishment, but capital punishment is not immoral but is in fact morally warranted in the use to show the severity of life and how more than one life is lost and discarded in the crime, for both the victim and the criminal. The criminal is already dead to society, the death penalty is just putting them out of their misery, as life has no mercy for them anyway, given how there is no way to repay the life they have so harshly taken.