Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Efficacy of the Death Penalty

The day before reading this and this
I had read the following about

Efficacy of the Death Penalty


Thucydides 3.45.3-7 (speech of Diodotus on the fate of the Mytilenaeans; tr. C.F. Smith): 

[3] All men are by nature prone to err, both in private and in public life, and there is no law which will prevent them; in fact, mankind has run the whole gamut of penalties, making them more and more severe, in the hope that the transgressions of evil-doers might be abated. It is probable that in ancient times the penalties prescribed for the greatest offences were relatively mild, but as transgressions still occurred, in course of time the penalty was seldom less than death. But even so there is still transgression.

[4] Either, then, some terror more dreadful than death must be discovered, or we must own that death at least is no prevention. Nay, men are lured into hazardous enterprises by the constraint of poverty, which makes them bold, by the insolence and pride of affluence, which makes them greedy, and by the various passions engendered in the other conditions of human life as these are severally mastered by some mighty and irresistible impulse.

[5] Then, too, Hope and Desire are everywhere; Desire leads, Hope attends; Desire contrives the plan, Hope suggests the facility of fortune; the two passions are most baneful, and being unseen phantoms prevail over seen dangers.

[6] Besides these, fortune contributes in no less degree to urge men on; for she sometimes presents herself unexpectedly and thus tempts men to take risks even when their resources are inadequate, and states even more than men, inasmuch as the stake is the greatest of all — their own freedom or empire over others — and the individual, when supported by the whole people, unreasonably overestimates his own strength.

[7] In a word, it is impossible, and a mark of extreme simplicity, for anyone to imagine that when human nature is wholeheartedly bent on any undertaking it can be diverted from it by rigorous laws or by any other terror.

Thucydides (ca. 490 – 429 BCE)

with thanks to Michael Gilleland at 
Laudator Temporis Acti



4 comments:

  1. Re: "some terror more dreadful than death must be discovered" I can think of many. It is a very easy discovery to make. And many are not obviously extreme - unfortunately more than 800,000 people every year act fatally on their decision that their everyday life is a worse terror than death. Not a pleasant comment, but perhaps a relevant one.

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    1. Certainly no whataboutism, but relevant a comment. It leaves open, though, what you think about the Efficacy of the Death Penalty.

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  2. I can think of many who deserve it, but there are also many who have been put to death unjustly, so I don't support it (although in some obvious cases where there is clearly no doubt of guilt of horrors I would be very tempted to). As for is it an effective deterrent? - which I suppose is all you asked - I don't know.

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    1. As if we had almost identical thought patterns. Fascinating.

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