Just Violence 1
Just Violence: An Aristotelian Justification of Capital Punishment
Sarah Tischler Aikin
California State University at Chico
Just Violence 1
Just Violence: An Aristotelian Justification of Capital Punishment
In the United States today, criminal homicide is the only crime legally punishable by death.[1] Historically, common law defined murder as “the unlawful killing of another human being with ‘malice aforethought’.”[2] While the terms included in this definition such as “malice aforethought” have undergone scrupulous analysis, efforts in the legal realm have been less devoted to understanding the theoretical justification for capital punishment. The lack of debate regarding the justificatory aspects of the death penalty in the law is most likely the result of a ruling by the Supreme Court in 1976 upholding the constitutionality of the death penalty.[3] The task of moral justification has been left to philosophers who continue to debate the moral permissibility, based on ethical principles, of punishment by death.
The most common sources of theoretical justification for capital punishment are Immanuel Kant’s theory of retributivism and John Stuart Mill’s consequentialist approach based on utility. Both these philosophers explicitly address the issue of capital punishment as a moral obligation in their ethical writings. Significantly less attention has been given to other moral theories as potential sources for theoretical justification of punishment by death. The most prevalent of these is Aristotelian ethical theory. While Aristotle does not explicitly argue for death as just punishment for murder, the principles found in his theory of human action and justice in rectification lend themselves to a principled justification of the death penalty for crimes of murder in a limited number of cases.
In what follows, Aristotle’s theories of human action, moral culpability, and rectificatory justice will be explicated. On the basis of these theories and the principles that support their assertion, an Aristotelian justification of capital punishment will be offered.
Theory Of Action
Aristotle offers an analysis of human action in which each distinct act is judged based on the intent of the agent who commits the act and the situational conditions in the environment. The intentions of the acting agent alone are what distinguish the vicious act from the involuntary. Culpability is not determined on the basis of merely physical contributions of an agent in terms of his or her role in causation. The inclusion of intent and external circumstance in the theory provides a set of criteria specifying which members in society are eligible for capital punishment by determining which types of acts render an agent blameworthy for the effects of the action.
Aristotle identifies three types of human action: voluntary, involuntary, and non-voluntary.[4] Under analysis, the motivation of every human act will fall into one of these three categories. Since voluntary action is most easily understood once the parameters of involuntary and nonvoluntary actions have been set, it is best to start with these.
Involuntary Actions Due to Force
Aristotle distinguishes two types of involuntary action: forced action and actions done in ignorance of particulars.[5] This distinction is based on the difference in origin of the action. In Aristotelian terms the origin of all action begins with some initiating component.[6] The impetus is called the principle of action[7] and can be understood in terms of the initial circumstances or concepts causing some action. Actions that are forced have some external cause as the impetus for an act. Forced actions are further divided into the two subgroups of entirely forced and mixed actions. In actions that are entirely forced the principle of action is completely external to the agent[8]. Since Aristotle does not consider this type of action a moral act, this category can be ignored for the present discussion.
Mixed Actions
The second type of involuntary action is mixed action. Mixed actions include all actions chosen under duress or as the result of coercion.[9] In these cases, the external circumstances of a situation motivate an agent’s choice to act. Aristotle seems to assume coercion to exist only in situations where an agent is compelled to act by a credible threat of serious harm to one’s self or to loved ones. In Aristotelian terms, one can be coerced by external causes of fortune[10] or coerced to act as the result of a human threat. [11] In either case, the agent acts under duress, the circumstances surrounding the action imposing pressures on the choices for action. An agent may be forced by an ultimatum, where the preferable course of action will produce the least amount of harm.
Any time that some person is killed out of self-defense, the death would be considered involuntary by Aristotle’s definition given that the threat of bodily harm was adequately severe. These cases are obvious examples of mixed actions where the threat against some agent’s life is considered adequately coercive to warrant the act of killing. Taken out of context, actions of this sort would be considered wrong. But the particular circumstances of coerced actions render the acting agent blameless when the force of the threat is adequately noxious and strong. The ultimate choice to act is made by the agent but the coercive circumstances are the reason that the action is considered choice-worthy. Understood in this light, it can be said that the principle of action originates outside the acting agent in the form of a threat. The action is considered mixed by Aristotle because the ultimate choice to act must be made by the agent and this step is voluntary. The difference between mixed actions and voluntary actions is the presence of an external threat in mixed actions. The coercive force provides the impetus for a mixed action and renders that action choice-worthy given the circumstances, without which the same action would be considered reprehensible. The external causal factor from which mixed actions originate, be it threatening weather conditions or a malicious villain, includes these acts in the class of forced actions.
Ignorance of the Particulars
While forced actions are considered involuntary because the principle of action is external to the agent, actions committed in ignorance are involuntary because the agent lacks knowledge of the particular facts associated with the action that would lead her to choose otherwise or enable her to make an informed choice at all. The relevant particulars include the knowledge of who committed the action, what the action is, to whom the action is done, with what instrument, for what result, and in what way the action will be executed[12]. An action done in ignorance is committed in the absence of only some or one of these particulars. Ignorance of any these particulars prior to any action would suggest that the acting agent was not relevantly informed.[13]
For example, some agent purchases some juice at the local super market. Unbeknownst to her, the juice is rancid and has gone toxic. If the agent goes home and gives her partner a glass of this juice, inadvertently poisoning her partner and bringing about his death, the agent is not considered morally culpable in Aristotelian terms. Her ignorance of the toxicity of the juice is a cause for pardon. In this case, the agent was ignorant of the relevant particular of the toxicity of the juice that would have allowed her to decide to commit this action.
According to Aristotle, discomfort and pain are the natural partners to involuntary action[14]. An agent who acts involuntarily due to ignorance will feel remorse for what has occurred. Ignorance that leads to the final outcome of some action is considered a mitigating circumstance. If it is clear that the same action would not have been chosen had the agent known the relevant particulars and the acting agent did not intend the result of the action, that agent would not be held morally responsible for the action committed.
While actions committed in ignorance are not considered vicious, not all acts committed in ignorance of the particulars are pardonable. If an act was committed in ignorance but the cause for that ignorance is the fault of the agent, the action may still be blameworthy, even if the agent is not. A contemporary example of this is illustrated in the ways we hold drunk drivers accountable for the damages they cause. While it may be the case that the amount of alcohol consumed hindered judgment or interfered with the ability to ascertain knowledge about relevant particulars (i.e. running a red light because one didn’t notice that the color had changed) the choice to drink so heavily that this sort of ignorance would become quite likely is an action that might have been avoided[15].
Nonvoluntary Actions
While actions done in ignorance of the particulars are sometimes pardonable, actions done in ignorance of the principle of action are neither praise- nor blameworthy[16]. Aristotle considers actions committed in ignorance of the principle of action nonvoluntary. For the agent who does some wrong but who is wholly ignorant that the action is wrong, the act itself is chosen but is uninformed on a theoretical level. Conversely, the act cannot be called involuntary since it was not caused by force, nor is it done in ignorance of the particulars. This special class of actions is relevant on the rare occasions when an agent, who remains completely oblivious to the principle, breaks some rule.
When children behave in physically harmful ways, it is usually because a child has not learned certain principles that would prohibit the action, such as “sentient beings feel pain.” If a child is found pulling the cat’s tail, a reasonable reaction might be to teach her that the cat feels pain when its tail is yanked. Rather than blaming the child, she is informed that the action of harshly tugging on the limbs of animals causes harm. Before this lesson has been learned, the child cannot be said to have understood the principle of action behind hurting the cat by yanking on its tail. If the child is ignorant of this principle, she will not have chosen to hurt the cat nor could she have chosen not to hurt the cat. In addition, she will feel no regret or remorse for the action she commits before she has learned this principle. Lack of regret is considered a necessary condition for nonvoluntary actions according to Aristotle.[17]
Voluntary Actions
If the principle of the action is in the agent and the agent knows all the relevant principles and particulars involved, by Aristotelian standards the act is voluntary.[18] Voluntary actions that result in harm are vicious when the agent chooses them after a process of deliberation. Aristotle defines ‘choice’ as a deliberative desire to achieve a previously specified end.[19] The process of choosing itself is voluntary and requires previous deliberation.[20] As Aristotle describes the process, deliberation will always precede choice and choice is always voluntary.
Aristotle lists the objects of deliberation as actions, means, and results that might be attained through human agency[21]. The process involves determining a desired end and planning how this end can be achieved. It is a type of inquiry that includes analysis of each step required to attain a determined end. According to Aristotle’s analysis, people deliberate about what might be achievable through their own agency. As the originator of some chosen act, agents are themselves considered principles of action by Aristotle since the initial cause of the action manifests in the acting agents mind.
Vicious Actions and Human Agency
An Aristotelian analysis describes the entire process of a voluntary vicious action as follows; Agents wish for some end. If the act is vicious, it will involve either intentional or willful disregard of the well being of some individual. The agent will deliberate and decide to act in ways that will promote that destructive end. The choices made to do and not do certain actions are the very things that define human character in Aristotelian ethics. In part he defines virtue and vice as behaviors and feelings which involve ends. Since the process by which the end is determined and also the process by which that end is obtained are voluntary human processes, so are virtue and vice considered voluntary character traits[22].
The activities that are chosen will dictate one’s character. Those actions that are chosen and committed repeatedly will have an effect on the types of decisions each agent will make in the future. Over time, these repeated choices and actions form the character one has. While actions were at one point freely chosen and are always freely chosen if the actions are voluntary, it may become extremely difficult to change one’s behavior once acts of viciousness become habituated. One who has chronically acted unjustly may wish to change but it may be very difficult to escape a certain pattern of behavior. This difficulty in itself does not render the actions committed involuntary, since the principle of action is entirely within the agent, and has been since the advent of human agency. What Aristotle does acknowledge is the constant interplay between character and action. While he asserts that humans remain free throughout their lives, they are not free in the extreme sense where the choices made in the past have no bearing on the choices made in the present.
Human agency is also assumed when the distinction is made between those things that are the result of nature and those that are the result of agency. Aristotle notes that societies do not blame people for things that are the result of nature but do blame them for things that are the result of choice. If a person suffers from schizophrenia and acts out publicly as the result of a hallucination, people react differently than in cases where an agent voluntarily ingests LSD, a chemical known to cause hallucinations, and acts out publicly as the result. As in the afore mentioned cases, the outcome may look identical between cases where nature was the cause and those brought about by choices made by the agent. But the agent is held culpable if it is thought that the outcome might have been within that agent’s power to avoid.