Abstract
This chapter sets out the traditional natural law defense of the claim that the death penalty can in principle be a just punishment for certain offenses. It begins by explaining the relevant principles of traditional natural law theory and how they are grounded in a broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. It then shows how the goodness of retribution follows from these principles, and thus is intelligible given that metaphysical picture. This is followed by an application of these results to the justification of capital punishment specifically, as an instance of retributive justice. Finally, Feser responds to some objections.
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Notes
- 1.
See Feser and Bessette (2017) for a book-length treatment of these issues. Despite the book’s subtitle, much of its argumentation will be of interest to non-Catholics, being purely philosophical and social scientific in character.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
See chapter 3 of Koritansky (2012) for an extended treatment of this theme in Aquinas.
- 5.
This might be sufficient on the very different notion of proportionality criticized in Nathanson (2001, 76–77).
- 6.
See Boonin (2008, ch. 3) for criticism of attempts to justify retribution by appeal to intuitions.
- 7.
David Oderberg (2000, ch. 4) defends capital punishment on the grounds that there is such a thing as the worst possible crime and the worst possible punishment, and that the former merits the latter. But it seems to me that this is a stronger claim than one needs in order to provide a defense of capital punishment based on the principle of proportionality.
- 8.
Punishing theft with death certainly seems disproportionate by modern standards, but Aquinas presumably had in mind premodern circumstances in which, for example, bandits might raid villages more or less with impunity without police to deter them or prisons to restrain them, so that execution seemed the only realistic remedy.
- 9.
I thank Benjamin Yost for helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.
References
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Feser, E. (2023). The Justice of Capital Punishment. In: Altman, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment. Palgrave Handbooks in the Philosophy of Law. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11874-6_33
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