Concept

Capital punishment

Overview

legal process whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

1. xxii. 1), as our Sages stated. These three, the rebellious and disobedient son, he who steals and sells a human being, and he who breaks into a house, become murderers in the course of time, as is well known. Capital punishment is only decreed for these serious crimes, and in no other case. Not all forbidden sexual intercourse is visited with the penalty of death, but only in those cases in which the criminal act…

   Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed

   States what Capital punishment is; names Capital punishment.

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2. But since God has favoured both him and his victim, instead of being put to death, he shall be allowed to go into exile and take his property with him, the damage due to the sufferer having been previously estimated by the court, which shall be the same as would have tried the case if death had ensued. If a child should intentionally wound a parent, or a servant his master, or brother or sister wound brother or…

   Plato, Laws

   The author is tied to Capital punishment in the knowledge graph.

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3. Upon some occasions, indeed, we both punish and approve of punishment, merely from a view to the general interest of society, which, we imagine, cannot otherwise be secured. Of this kind are all the punishments inflicted for breaches of what is called either civil police, or military discipline. Such crimes do not immediately or directly hurt any particular person; but their remote consequences, it is supposed, do…

   Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith

   States what Capital punishment is.

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Philosophers who discussed Capital punishment

• Socrates

Related ideas

• Washington, D.C.
• Armenia
• Turkey
• BBC News
• Homicide
• Gnosticism
• Princeton University Press
• German Empire
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• East Germany
• Post-classical history
• Laws (dialogue)
• Herodotus
• Great Purge
• Human rights
• Immanuel Kant
• Punishment
• John Stuart Mill
• John Locke
• Karl Marx
• Latin
• London
• Michigan
• Caribbean

Opposing perspectives

• Julius Caesar
• Nation state
• Utilitarianism
• Charles Dickens

Place in the tradition

Part of Socrates.

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