Capital Punishment in film Dead Man Walking - Essay Example

? The film “Dead Man Walking” depicts the appeal process faced by a convicted murderer, and how his crime, trial and acts on death row affect himself, a nun who is working with him on his appeal, and the families of the victims. It invokes some of the hardest and most troubling questions facing society today such as: does the state have the right to kill its own citizens? and ‘is it ever right to kill?’. Philosophers and thinkers have been struggling with these same questions for thousands of years. Somewhat surprisingly in a field where many experts disagree with each other, three of the greatest pillars of Western Philosophy over the past two thousand years, Aristotle, John Stuart Mill and Emmanuel Kant are all staunchly in favour of the death penalty as a punishment for murder. Even more surprisingly, all three philosophers justify their defence of capital punishment through three amazingly different theoretical frameworks, all coming to the same conclusion through very different means. All three philosophers, however, have serious flaws in their arguments for capital punishment (especially when considered in today’s society) and strong arguments against capital punishment can still be made. This essay will critically examine cases such as those in the film “Dead Man Walking” through the lens of Kant, Mill’s and Aristotle’s ethical philosophies. This case can serve as something of a testing ground for when capital punishment would be the most justified. In “Dead Man Walking” the main character, Matthew Poncelet, murders two people in cold blood, with malicious intent, and for the vast majority of the film shows no measure of remorse. Furthermore, he is an unsympathetic character generally, espousing sexist opinions and seems generally just to be an evil, uncaring human being until the film’s final scene. Poncelet’s character thus removes many of the justifications for not sentencing someone to death, such as a religious awakening after the fact, intense and real remorse, or otherwise good or noble character. This means that analyzing Poncelet’s case is not so much about analysing his specific circumstances, but analyzing whether the death penalty is ever justified, even in the most extreme and terrible cases, because he has so few redeeming qualities. One of the first recorded philosophers to try to tackle the question of capital punishment was Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics. These ethics do not attempt to address the issue of capital punishment, but rather form foundations from which he believes all ethics should be derived. These ethics are based on several foundations, and demonstrate an understanding of the fact that different societies will have different societal expectations, and in attempting to create a universal ethic Aristotle tries to make a flexible system that will accommodate these differences. He main way that Aristotle attempts to accommodate for these differences is by introducing the idea of the “just man” (Aristotle 68). Aristotle says that moral actions can be viewed through the lens of what a just man in a particular society would do; if a good just, honourable man of one’s society would behave in a certain way then that action is what must be considered just. Aristotle adds two further theories to make sure their is some stability and objective morality across all cultures by adding the ideas of fairness and equality to the idea of the just man, so that if a society would consider a just man’s actions good even if they were unequal or unfair, Aristotle would still consider those actions immoral (74). The final aspect of Aristotle’s theory of justice is that of rectification, that is, when one commits a wrong towards another he must make recompense to the person who he has wrong equal to the amount of wrong done (67). If for instance, someone killed another person’s sheep, he would be responsible for providing a sheep to make up for the damages. All these theories combine to support capital punishment in a variety of ways. First, there are certainly just people in some societies today (and even more so in Aristotle’s society) would consider capital punishment a just response to murder. Furthermore, it can be considered both fair and equal, because someone has taken a life and having their own life taken is a equal and fair a response as could be devised. Furthermore, some degree of rectification exists, as a life is given for a life taken. While Aristotle uses his conception of his own morality to defend the use of capital punishment, it has several serious flaws, especially when talking about modern American society. The first is the idea of just man. While there are, as mentioned earlier, certainly people in today’s society that would consider it just to execute a convicted murderer (the judges who sentence the executions being prime among them), there are also a wide variety of just people, such as clergymen and regular citizens, who would say that it is unjust to execute a convicted murderer, regardless of the circumstances. So in a society as diverse as exists presently, it is nearly impossible to use a “just person” theory of justice. Furthermore, while it may seem fair and equal to take a life for a life taken, this does not meet with the qualities of rectification. It is utterly impossible to give back a life taken, and thus there is no way for someone to actually rectify a situation caused by murder, so the rectification principle falls apart in this case. Rectification, as mentioned above, can be explained as “if you steal someone’s sheep, you must give them a sheep in recompense.” Capital punishment, however, functions more like “if you kill someone’s sheep, they get to kill your sheep as punishment.” This is not rectification, but revenge. While Aristotle has a relatively elaborate explanation of capital punishment’s justification, Kant has a relatively simple one. Kant’s fundamental principle of morality is that everyone should act in such a way that their actions could be a general maxim, that is, that everyone could act that way (Kant 22). Basically this means that stealing is wrong because if everyone stole everyone would suffer. Kant’s second fundamental principle is that each person much be treated as an ends to themselves, and never as a means (12). So wrongdoing is doing something that could not be generalized into a maxim, and/or that treats someone as a means. Kant’s idea of punishment is based on the idea of retribution, basically of balancing scales. He believes that someone must suffer as much as the suffering they have caused to create a form of balance (23). In this way capital punishment is justified because it enacts equal retribution to the wrongdoer as the wrong caused. Kant was entirely against the idea of capital punishment as a deterrent, because he believed that would be treating a person as a means to an end (deterring other criminals). Kant’s arguments towards capital punishment are convincing, but also somewhat fallible. For one thing, it imagines an absolute scale of suffering, saying that one punishment is going to cause equal suffering for anyone who receives it. But suffering is not always equal. The average person, for instance, might not suffer greatly from having their tonsils removed. But an opera singer could suffer a great deal, because the change in their throat could drastically affect or even destroy their ability to sing, something they love and earn their living doing. Or in the case of murder consider this: if the murderer feels remorse (as Matthew Poncelet did at the end of “Dead Man Walking”) might it be a greater punishment for him to live the rest of his life with that remorse than die and escape from it? Kant’s principles fall apart when one understands the wide difference in suffering the same punishment may cause. John Stuart Mill’s defence of capital punishment is essentially the opposite of Kant’s. The founder of Utilitarianism, Mill believes that the basic essence of good is the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people, with good being described generally as freedom from pain and fear (Mill 2). In this way Mill believes in capital punishment essentially only for its deterrent value; in a speech debating the abolition of capital punishment in England he lambasts the country for having lost all of its ability to punish people in a way that would scare them from committing crimes (handout). He argues that the death penalty should remain, because it prevents people from committing murder because of fear that they themselves will be caught and hung, and people not committing murder agrees with the principles of Utilitarianism as one of its fundamental precepts is lack of fear for one’s life. Mill’s arguments, however, fall apart somewhat when considered in today’s time. Mill could not imagine the possibility of a government having the resources to keep people perpetually in prison, and so the idea of life imprisonment would not even have occurred to him. Spending one’s life in a maximum security prison should surely be as much of a deterrent as capital punishment; some prisoners find life in prison so unbearable that they commit suicide, so it could possibly be an even worse punishment. Furthermore, keeping someone alive gives them the chance to atone for their crimes, and surely this chance could lead to a greater benefit to a greater number of people than the criminal’s death. Aristotle, Kant and Mill all espouse arguments for the justice and moral validity of the death penalty. Their arguments, however, fail to convince. Aristotle’s are not even internally self-coherent (as capital punishment does not actually subscribe to the “just man” or rectification tests), while Kant’s demands suffering in punishment exactly equal to that of crime, something that is both impossible to measure and does not necessarily require the death penalty. John Stuart Mill’s argument, based largely on the fact that he could think of no other suitably scary but humane punishment is simply a product of his times, and woefully out of date considering the power of the modern prison-industrial complex. None of these thinkers, even though they are some of the greatest minds of the past two thousand years, can give a fool-proof defence of the death penalty, and unless someone can, it is immoral to give the most absolute punishment. Works Cited Aristotle, and Martin Ostwald. Nicomachean Ethics. Indianapolis Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962. Print. Kant, Emmanuel. The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. New York, NY.: Macmillan, 1990. Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2011. Print. Read More