buddhistethics posted: "ISSN
1076-9005 Volume 26, 2019 Buddhism and Capital Punishment: A Revisitation
Martin Kovan University of Melbourne The first Buddhist precept prohibits the
intentional, even sanctioned, taking of life. However, capital punishment
remains legal, an"
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New post on Journal of Buddhist Ethics
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 26, 2019
Buddhism and Capital
Punishment: A Revisitation
Martin Kovan
University of Melbourne
The first Buddhist
precept prohibits the intentional, even sanctioned, taking of life.
However, capital punishment remains legal, and even increasingly
applied, in some culturally Buddhist polities and beyond them. The
classical Buddhist norm of unconditional compassion as a counterforce
to such punishment thus appears insufficient to oppose it. This paper
engages classical Buddhist and Western argument for and against capital
punishment, locating a Buddhist refutation of deterrent and Kantian
retributivist grounds for it not only in Nāgārjunian appeals to
compassion, but also the metaphysical and moral constitution of the
agent of lethal crime, and thereby the object of its moral
consequences. Read article
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