"Religious traditions speak of the sacredness of each human being, but I doubt that sanctity is a concept that has a secure home outside of those traditions." - Raimond Gaita (atheistic philosopher)

Now that the politicians have finished their debate on capital punishment, the serious philosophical debate on the issue can proceed. And we can now lift the debate outside the narrow confines of the Jamaican context and look at some overarching issues.

Usually, the debate on capital punishment is conducted with smugness and a feeling of intellectual superiority on the part of those opposed to capital punishment; with pro-capital punishment supporters stereotyped as either Bible-thumping religious zealots or visceral, vengeful mobsters disdainful of reason. However irenic the anti-capital punishment proponent is, the clear impression which emerges is that he is calm, rational and thoughtful, while his opponent is largely scornful of reason and held captive by emotions.

The impression usually is that reason and enlightenment are one the side of the anti-capital punishment proponent. And, after all, hasn't all of 'civilised Europe' gone the way of the abolition of capital punishment? In the developed First World, it's only in the United States, that culturally time-warped industrialised nation which still nurtures primordial religious instincts, where we see capital punishment retained in some states.

Murder

But in Europe, the home of the enlightenment and the cradle of the Western philosophical tradition, one would never countenance any barbaric notion of the state taking lives as punishment for murder. That belongs to despotic Islamic states or in the minds of people taken with that vengeful Old Testament God!

So let's forget about the Bible and religion and let's use reason. On the basis of reason and on the foundation of secularism, what is the ground for the opposition to the death penalty? It is asserted that the death penalty is barbaric, unjust, even uncivilised. But on what rational grounds? I put it to you that the anti-death penalty proponent is appealing to emotional reasons no less than many pro-capital punishment advocates. It is mostly on the basis of emotional sentiments why they feel taking a life for a life is barbaric, cruel and uncivilised.

As human beings, our first instinct is self-preservation. Instinctively, we desire life. The philosopher David Hume developed his ethics on the basis of what he called the sentiments. Hume rejected religious grounding for morality. He rejected what is called in philosophy divine command ethics. He says humans derive moral principles from sympathy or fellow-feeling with other human beings. We have the propensity to identify with other's people pains and pleasures for we share a common humanity.

None of us, says Hume, is "so entirely indifferent of their fellow-creatures as to perceive no distinctions of moral good and evil".

Morality

So Hume felt that innately we know what is right or wrong on the basis of fellow-feeling or sentimentality.

This is precisely what the enlightened people of Europe and the human rights activists have done. The philosopher Immanuel Kant took a contrasting view: he believed there was universal reason and that through the discovery of universal principles we could fashion morality.

With all their intellectual blustering, the anti-capital punishment advocates seem to oppose capital punishment for no better reason than that it feels bad and seems bad to take another's life. A man hanging from a rope tugs at human emotions. A man being destroyed through lethal injection seems so cruel, so brutal. His psychological suffering before seems so heartless and so inhumane. These are all emotional categories essentially (not that universal morality cannot intersect with empathy.) But as a philosophical grounding human solidarity in itself is weak.

Let's ask, fundamentally, what is the rational basis for asserting that each and every human life is sacrosanct? How do we ground the dignity and inviolability of every single human being? Outside of a religious context, you can't! The Universal Declaration of Human Rights refers in its preamble to "the inherent dignity" of all members of the human family, asserting that "all members of the human family are born free and equal in dignity and rights". How do we know that? That's religious ideology, smuggled in through the back door of the secular edifice.

Secularists and human rights activists who are atheists have been living parasitically off the heritage of the religious traditions while despising them.

Admits Australian atheistic philosopher Raimond Gaita in his book, A Common Humanity: Thinking About Love and Justice: "We may say that all human beings are inestimably precious; that they are ends in themselves; that they are owed unconditional respect; that they possess inalienable rights and, of course, that they possess inalienable dignity.

"These are ways of trying to say what we feel and need to say when we are estranged from the conceptual resources we need to say it." Those resources are the religious traditions.

Social constructivism

If we are all here by accident and the universe itself is purposeless and random, then how do we really ground human dignity? How do we get beyond social constructivism? Morality, then, would have to be a human construct and you could not speak in the kind of universal language that "human dignity, "inalienable rights", etc. That's quasi-religious language.

Admits Gaita further, "The secular philosophical tradition speaks of inalienable rights, inalienable dignity and persons as ends in themselves. These are, I believe, ways of whistling in the dark, ways of trying to secure to reason what reason cannot finally underwrite."

In perhaps the most thoughtful piece to have been published in the recent capital punishment debate, Roderick Rainford says in a Gleaner article titled 'An unfinished national debate' that both the capital punishment and anti-capital punishment views are "matters of the heart". He is opposed to capital punishment and adds, "To some of us the sanctity of life means, as a fundamental moral/philosophical matter, that absolutely no one - including the most depraved murderer - should be deprived of life except perhaps in cases of justified self-defence."

But how do you ground that outside of "the heart"? You can't. Rainford says for the majority "the idea of murdering a fellow human being is repugnant". That's the language of emotion. Now, Aristotle had developed his philosophy of morality on the basis of humans as social beings, but all these ideas are relativistic.

One of the most engaging philosophers of law who has spent a considerable time studying the issue of morality and human rights is the Robert Woodruff Professor of Law Michael Perry. In his major essay, Human Rights as Morality, Human Rights as Law (2008) he says, "If it is true, why is it true - in virtue of what is it true - that every human being has inherent dignity and that we should live our lives in accord with the fact that every human being has inherent dignity?"

The Nobel Prize-winning development economist Amartya Sen in an essay in Philosophy and Public Affairs (2004) says, "Despite the persistent use of the idea of human rights in practical affairs, there are many who see the idea as no more than 'bawling on paper', to use another of Bantam's barbed portrayals of natural rights clams."

Punishment and retribution are integral to law. The question is whether the punishment fits the crime. We all agree that it seems unjust to throw a man in jail for 20 years for speeding or to imprison him for 10 years for littering. We also agree that it is unjust to take his life for stealing. But why is it inherently unjust to take a life for a life? Why is that necessarily contemptuous of the dignity of life?

Life is uniquely precious

I quote Andrew Tallman, who has put it this way: "Life is uniquely precious, which is exactly why taking the life of one who deliberately takes innocent life is the only way to affirm life's sacredness. When something is sacred that does not mean that it cannot be violated. Rather, it means that it must be violated only in the rarest of cases and only in the most deliberate of ways."

Of course, it is not always as cut-and-dried as that, for we agree it is unjust to execute juveniles, the insane and the mentally retarded, and some, like Prime Minister Golding, would say women. But at least Golding was honest to admit that he has no philosophical reasons for exempting women. Thomas Kleven turns the deterrence argument on its head by asking that if executing juveniles and the criminally insane would deter murders, why is it wrong? He says the issue of blameworthiness is key in the capital punishment debate, and one can't discount social factors (See his paper 'Is Capital Punishment Immoral Even if it Deters?')

Here we touch on a thorny issue for those who support capital punishment. How much free will do people really have? How much responsibility for crime should be laid at the feet of a society itself which is unjust, and which does not provide enough opportunities and proper socialisation for its poor, who constitute the majority of offenders? Pro-capital punishment defenders have to wrestle with that, but if those arguments are stretched too far by the anti-capital punishment lobby, that could provide good reasons for us not to punish at all for any crime.

Commonsense practices

Western jurisprudence is built on a philosophical foundation which accepts free will. It is amazing how many of our commonsense practices have deep philosophical assumptions. And these assumptions go unexamined by even the best schooled of us.

Nietzsche was profound: "The masses blink and say 'We are all equal'. Before God! But now this God has died" (thus spoke Zarathustra). Michael Perry asks poignantly, "For one who believes that the universe is utterly bereft of transcendent meaning, why in virtue of what is it the case that every human being has human dignity?"

Even if you put aside the issues of innocent people getting executed, Jamaica's inefficient justice system, and capital punishment not being a deterrent, many anti-capital punishment advocates would still be opposed to capital punishment. It seems that their 'reasons' are just as sentimental and emotional as the pro-capital punishment people whom they dismiss for being purely emotional.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerujm.com.