PHI-2630 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Eye For An Eye, Retributive Justice
Document Summary
Lecture 11: death penalty continued: retribution argument- argument for the death penalty. We ought to treat people as they have treated others. What people deserve is determined by what they have done: equality retributivism: we repay criminals with punishments equal to their crimes, problems with the law: It does not provide an adequate criterion for determining appropriate levels of punishment; it recommends punishments which are unacceptable (rape, torture, kidnapping, etc. ) It does not provide a measure of moral desert- sometimes it says nothing at all about how to punish people. Nathanson"s repl(cid:455)- the first problem still applies, but there is problems in calculating suffering and individual differences, and some crimes do not produce suffering: proportional retributivism: punishment needs to be proportional to the crime. Alone it doesn"t support the death penalty and it also does not yield any specific recommendations regarding punishments.
