著者

中村 信隆

出版者

Japanese Association for the Contemporary and Applied Philosophy (JACAP)

雑誌

Contemporary and Applied Philosophy (ISSN:18834329)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.10, pp.1-22, 2018-07-23

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The purpose of this paper is to morally justify the death penalty according to the "expressive theory of retribution, " which has been developed by Jean Hampton. She tries to justify retributive punishment on the basis of the expressive or communicative role of punishment, arguing that retributive punishment can express and reaffirm victims' worth or dignity and their equality with offenders, which were negated by the offenders' actions. In this paper, I try to apply the expressive theory of retribution to the issue of death penalty. The problem is that it is unclear whether the death penalty is compatible with the human dignity of offenders. The first purpose of retributive punishment is to express victims' dignity, but retributive punishment must also not degrade offenders' dignity, because both victims and offenders equally have dignity. How then can imposing the death penalty on murderers be consistent with respect for their dignity? To consider this problem, I take up two questions. The first question is whether the death penalty shows implicit disregard for the human dignity of unrepentant offenders by precluding the possibility of their resipiscence as the development of their own moral character. On this question I advocate the death penalty by arguing that it does not degrade offenders' dignity as long as we provide them the opportunity of resipiscence by allowing them sufficient time between sentencing and execution. The second question is whether any method of execution is not intrinsically degrading to offenders' dignity. On this question, I argue that some methods of execution are not intrinsically degrading to offenders' dignity, and even if those methods are accused of cruelty, cruelty is in itself irrelevant for the justification of the death penalty in the expressive theory of retribution.