PrescriptivePolitical & legal
The death penalty
On the axis: The meaning of punishment · capital punishment
Is killing the criminal the only penalty matching the worst crimes (Kant), or a punishment that deters no better than another, forecloses any return, and lowers the society that inflicts it (Beccaria, Camus)?
Philosophers' positions
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Justification
Punishment is demanded by justice itself, as retribution proportionate to the crime (juridical law of retaliation), never as a mere means of social utility: punishing someone to deter others would treat him as a means. This is classical retributivism.
Metaphysics of Morals, Doctrine of Right, §49 E