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The Purgative Rationale for the Death Penalty: Replies to Steiker and Danaher

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Abstract

This article defends my 2011 book “The Ethics of Capital Punishment” against the thoughtful critiques written by Carol Steiker and John Danaher respectively. It does not attempt to respond to every point of contention in the two critiques, but concentrates instead on a few of the main points from each of them.

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Notes

  1. Whereas my book’s statements about full responsibility are referring to an extreme evildoer’s unmitigated responsibility (for his own crimes), someone who harbors the misunderstanding described here has preposterously presumed that my book’s statements about full responsibility are referring to an extreme evildoer’s comprehensive responsibility (for the crimes of others as well as for his own crimes).

  2. I explore those features at length in Kramer (2011, 2014). Of course, as I make clear in each of those books, I am not suggesting that every human being is endowed with all three of the listed qualities, nor am I suggesting that those qualities are unique to human beings (though the property of reflective agency at a high level is indeed distinctive of normal human adults).

  3. See especially §§ 2.2.11.2, 3.2.3.3.2, and 3.2.3.3.3 in Kramer (2014). My discussions there draw quite heavily at times on my earlier exposition of the act/omission dichotomy in Kramer (2003), 324–335.

  4. Of course, I recognize that they will have decided to punish him through some alternative sanction such as lifelong incarceration. However, a corollary of punishing him in some alternative fashion is that resources will be devoted to continuing his life.

  5. In the third chapter of Kramer (2014), I explain at length why interrogational torture is morally wrong even when it is the sole feasible means of gaining vital information that can avert a calamity. In the text here, I am simply gesturing toward the full account in that chapter.

  6. This distinction, with reference to the infliction of torture, is drawn at length in Chapters 3 and 5 of Kramer (2014). It is drawn more laconically in Kramer (2011), 61–63.

  7. As I have said in Kramer (2011), 247 n37, the deliberate inducement of insanity would also be morally illegitimate for independent reasons. The relevant reasons are similar to those which I discuss in my account of the wrongness of punitive torture in Kramer (2014), § 3.2.3.3.8.

References

  • Danaher, J. (2013). Kramer’s purgative rationale for capital punishment: A critique. Criminal Law and Philosophy. doi:10.1007/s11572-013-9251-8

  • Kramer, M. (2003). The quality of freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  • Kramer, M. (2011). The ethics of capital punishment: A philosophical investigation of evil and its consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  • Kramer, M. (2014). Torture and moral integrity: A philosophical enquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  • Steiker, C. (2013). Can/Should we purge evil through capital punishment? Criminal Law and Philosophy. doi:10.1007/s11572-013-9250-9

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  1. Cambridge University, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK

    Matthew H. Kramer

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  1. Matthew H. Kramer
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Correspondence to Matthew H. Kramer.

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Kramer, M.H. The Purgative Rationale for the Death Penalty: Replies to Steiker and Danaher. Criminal Law, Philosophy 9, 379–394 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-013-9284-z

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