John Stuart Mill and Capital Punishment

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses John Stuart Mill's disagreement with the laxity of the justice system of his time. His utilitarian outlook on capital punishment is examined. The paper explains that Mill staunchly objected to the extreme caution with which the justice system of his time imposed the death penalty on incorrigible criminals and the system's view of death as the worst evil, as opposed to life imprisonment.

From the Paper:

"He suggested that death was not as terrible as imagined by the judges and justices of his time, whom he described as effeminate and inefficacious in their responsibility. "For what else than effeminacy is it to be so much more shocked by taking a man's life than by deriving him of all that makes life desirable or valuable? (Hinman)." JS Mill, instead, proposed that genuine human education despised death as something inevitable and something to be held but ready to be risked for a worthy cause. While he agreed that death was among the greatest evils, human feelings counted more than human life and the avoidance of death. He wrote that "to deter by suffering from inflicting suffering is not only possible, but the very purpose of penal justice" in emphasizing that an individual who unjustly takes the life of another necessarily forfeits his own. The utilitarian thinker would see only quality life, not mere existence, as worth living. The criminal neither considers the victim's right to quality life nor does the criminal live it. Mill perceived criminality as directly opposed to the well-being of every member of society and society's survival itself. Any convincing utilitarian argument cannot get too far from his arguments."

More papers on John Stuart Mill and Capital Punishment:

• Argumentative Essay # 65150 : "A Utilitarian View of Capital Punishment"
• Persuasive Essay # 113725 : "Ethical Issues of Capital Punishment"
• Argumentative Essay # 147136 : "The Psychology of the Murderer"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: