Aristotle's View on Capital Punishment

Paper Summary:

This paper examines capital punishment as viewed by Aristotle, as a moral issue and argue the opinion that it is an immoral practice. This paper also carefully identifies and explains the premises that lead to this argument, looking at the flip side of the issue and creating a possible counter argument.

From the Paper:

"Aristotle also distinguishes between distributive and retributatory justice. Retributive justice, or punishment for things done wrong, is similar to criminal courts. Distributive justice is conceptually similar to civil courts and awarding financial compensation.
People should not be held accountable for involuntary actions; things they were forced to do, or that they did in ignorance of the facts, which may be called mistakes or mishaps. Voluntary unjust actions can be divided according to whether they were premeditated or not. Crimes done due to emotion rather than reason (ex: sudden anger) are acts of injustice, but the person who does things in the heat of the moment should not be regarded as a wicked or unjust person. Premeditated unjust actions can only be done by unjust or wicked people, Aristotle thought. This may seem fairly sensible, but is an important departure from Socrates and Plato who held that people never did things which they realized were wrong, and that all evil was caused solely by ignorance."

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