- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Preamble
- 1 Liberalism
- 2 Freedom
- 3 Culture and Anxiety
- 4 The Liberal Community
- 5 Liberal Imperialism
- 6 State and Private, Red and White
- 7 The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
- 8 Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
- 9 Hobbes and Individualism
- 10 Hobbes, Toleration, and the Inner Life
- 11 The Nature of Human Nature in Hobbes and Rousseau
- 12 Locke on Freedom
- 13 Mill’s Essay On Liberty
- 14 Sense and Sensibility in Mill’s Political Thought
- 15 Mill in a Liberal Landscape
- 16 Utilitarianism and Bureaucracy
- 17 Mill and Rousseau: Utility and Rights
- 18 Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty
- 19 Bertrand Russell’s Politics
- 20 Isaiah Berlin
- 21 Popper and Liberalism
- 22 Alexis de Tocqueville
- 23 Staunchly Modern, Nonbourgeois Liberalism
- 24 Pragmatism, Social Identity, Patriotism, and Self-Criticism
- 25 Deweyan Pragmatism and American Education
- 26 John Rawls
- 27 Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
- 28 Hegel on Work, Ownership, and Citizenship
- 29 Utility and Ownership
- 30 Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing
- 31 The Romantic Theory of Ownership
- 32 Justice, Exploitation, and the End of Morality
- 33 Liberty and Socialism
- Index
The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
Does the Death Penalty Violate Human Rights?
- Chapter:
- (p.139) 7 The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
- Source:
- The Making of Modern Liberalism
- Author(s):
Alan Ryan
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter examines whether the death penalty violates human rights. It begins with a discussion of the argument that all punishment must be inflicted in cold blood; whatever damage we do to others not in cold blood is not punishment but self-defense or revenge. It asserts that we may inflict whatever punishment is necessary to deter wrongdoing and that the death penalty raises no questions of justice that are different in kind from those raised by other forms of punishment, but that death as contrasted with incarceration may be thought to raise questions about irreversibility that are different in degree. It also considers the claim that a failure of fairness in the criminal justice system makes all punishment suspect. Finally, it tackles the question of how we should discuss the penalty of death by drawing on the views of Joseph de Maistre.
Keywords: death penalty, human rights, punishment, justice, incarceration, fairness, criminal justice system, Joseph de Maistre
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Preamble
- 1 Liberalism
- 2 Freedom
- 3 Culture and Anxiety
- 4 The Liberal Community
- 5 Liberal Imperialism
- 6 State and Private, Red and White
- 7 The Right to Kill in Cold Blood
- 8 Hobbes’s Political Philosophy
- 9 Hobbes and Individualism
- 10 Hobbes, Toleration, and the Inner Life
- 11 The Nature of Human Nature in Hobbes and Rousseau
- 12 Locke on Freedom
- 13 Mill’s Essay On Liberty
- 14 Sense and Sensibility in Mill’s Political Thought
- 15 Mill in a Liberal Landscape
- 16 Utilitarianism and Bureaucracy
- 17 Mill and Rousseau: Utility and Rights
- 18 Bureaucracy, Democracy, Liberty
- 19 Bertrand Russell’s Politics
- 20 Isaiah Berlin
- 21 Popper and Liberalism
- 22 Alexis de Tocqueville
- 23 Staunchly Modern, Nonbourgeois Liberalism
- 24 Pragmatism, Social Identity, Patriotism, and Self-Criticism
- 25 Deweyan Pragmatism and American Education
- 26 John Rawls
- 27 Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
- 28 Hegel on Work, Ownership, and Citizenship
- 29 Utility and Ownership
- 30 Maximizing, Moralizing, and Dramatizing
- 31 The Romantic Theory of Ownership
- 32 Justice, Exploitation, and the End of Morality
- 33 Liberty and Socialism
- Index