CHAPTER 2
Argument 3 (17)
The Death Penalty defends human dignity in the strongest way
This argument follows the previous argument as a necessity. Human value is as closely intertwined with human dignity as two entwined threads. Every human being is dressed in the costume of dignity since he has an inviolable value. Dignity gives us the ability to walk with our backs straight and without the need to feel ashamed for being humans. The dignity we possess causes us to treat our fellowmen with respect. It is our intrinsic dignity that has created and creates the civilized society.
Man can be robed of all of his possessions, he can be ridiculed and persecuted and abused, but normally man fights to his last breath in order to keep his dignity. But when the crime has been committed and the violent criminal and the murderer has crushed the dignity of a fellow man is it then somehow possible to reinstate the victim’s dignity?
Without hesitation we answer yes.
But it is impossible for this to happen by the perpetrator spending a few years in prison. This can only mean that the contempt against the dignity of the victim increases. If a victim isn’t worth very much and if he does not possess any special dignity, then there is no need to punish the violent criminal harshly.
But the capital punishment on the other hand restores the dignity of the victim in the strongest and clearest way. The capital punishment gives back human value and respect and the genuinely human spirit to the victim - in other words: dignity restored as far as it is possible. The capital punishment therefore becomes a posthumous celebration of the victim as a person and human being. No other penalty than the capital punishment can make this more clear.(1)
The violent criminal or the murderer took away the victim’s dignity, but the death penalty once again clothes the victim in the garment of dignity.
The death penalty also means that the dignity for all citizens is accepted, recognized and revered. That is important since it is among us now living that tomorrow’s unfortunate victims are. Every citizen should have the right to live in the society with a sense of dignity. All the alternatives to the death penalty for the most heinous crimes means that our straight backs are bent and that no one out there values us as humans who deserve the highest respect.
An enemy of the death penalty can sometimes say that the death penalty denies the cruel criminals inviolable value and dignity. In order to maintain such a philosophy one is forced to minimize human value and dignity to the lowest possible level so that even the worst violent criminal can take part of it. But do we want it that way? Do really brutal sex murderer and serial murderer have the same inviolable value and dignity as e.g. Mother Theresa or a ordinary citizen?
From a philosophical reasoning it can certainly be maintained that man, as a species, in itself has a value and a dignity. But few would in reality be ready to claim it in an absolute meaning. And for most of us it is obvious that the cruel act of violence by the criminal has an essential meaning when we think about terms such as dignity and value.
A criminal has explained to the world through repeatedly committing violent crimes or murder that he despises everything that is called dignity, and therefore he has just as brutally pulled away the soul of dignity away from himself and given the state governed by law an implied consent to do to him what he himself has done.
"If you kill another, you kill yourself." Immanuel Kant
A violent criminal or murderer can in other words not be allowed to first stamp his foot on the dignity of a fellowman and then in the court room demand respect for his own dignity, because he rejected it by his heinous crime. All the attention has to be aimed at the victims and their lost dignity.(2)
The capital punishment therefore means an acknowledgment that man has an inviolable value, and as a consequence acknowledgment of man’s (and foremost of the victim’s) dignity.
Therefore, the death penalty for violent criminals and murderer is a must, an absolute necessity. Because the dignity of man is at stake.
Footnote 1. Prof. Ernest van den Haag (supporter of the death penalty) means that the death penalty can be seen as a confirmation both of the humanity of the victim and of the murderer: "Human beings are human because they can be held responsible, as animals cannot be. In the Kantian sense the death penalty is a symbolic affirmation of the humanity of both victim and murderer." The Death Penalty in America, Hugo Adam Bedau, page 454. Back.
Footnote 2. And Prof. Walter Berns adds: "The criminal law must possess a dignity far beyond that possessed by mere statuary enactment or utilitarian and self-interested calculations; the most powerful means we have to give it that dignity is to authorize it to impose the ultimate penalty." For Capital Punishment, page 173. Back.
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© David Anderson 1998, 2002
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