ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 24, 2017
Capital Punishment: a Buddhist
Critique
Martin Kovan
University of Melbourne
Capital punishment is practiced in many nation-states,
secular and religious alike. It is also historically a feature of some
Buddhist polities, even though it defies the first Buddhist precept (pāṇatipātā)
prohibiting lethal harm. This essay considers a neo-Kantian theorization of
capital punishment (Sorell) and examines the reasons underwriting its
claims (with their roots in Bentham and Mill) with respect to the
prevention of and retribution for crime. The contextualization of this
argument with Buddhist-metaphysical and epistemological concerns around the
normativization of value, demonstrates that such a retributivist conception
of capital punishment constitutively undermines its own rational and
normative discourse. With this conclusion the paper upholds and justifies
the first Buddhist precept prohibiting lethal action in the case of capital
punishment.
|
