Reflections on the Guillotine (1957) | Hacker News Reader

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)

theanarchistlibrary.org

51 pointshalperter38 comments

There's a summary of this essay on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflections_on_the_Guillotine

This is a 1957 essay by Algerian-French philosopher Albert Camus.

> it is obviously no less repulsive than the crime,

Hard disagree. There are people who deserve death, and it is a good thing when it happens. It's just really dangerous to give the state such a power.

I wonder if you would feel different after witnessing an execution (by guillotine)? I believe Camus is arguing that you would, giving his father as example of someone who similarly changed his mind.

I have always actively avoided all the videos online of beheadings or other types of death, because i'm squeamish and don't want such images in my head. However, while not in person, I did actually witness a guillotine execution video. Admittedly it was filmed at a few hundred feet away, so it lacked any gore or closeups of the corpse. It was a shocking process - how quickly it happened (30 seconds from the appearance of the condemned to their demise). But it wasn't too hard to watch, and hasn't haunted me.

Anyway, there are a great many videos online of murders and other death scenes, and famously there were VHS tapes available pre-internet called "faces of death" showing such events. A great many people actively seek out and watch such things, seemingly with no negative reaction to them. So there are a lot of people who would presumably be even less affected by a guillotine execution than I was.

I mean, hangings and torture used to be done publicly and people would gather to watch in large crowds, even bringing the whole family. There are still people who travel to witness death-row executions for no apparent reason than their own pleasure. This kind of morbid obsession with violence and trivialization of it as a spectacle has become much less common as people have become more civilized with time, but I doubt it will ever fully disappear.

Camus also writes that these morbid events essentially harden the people who need to be softened, trivializing violence and thus perpetuating it. He uses the example of pickpockets, where a large majority of pickpockets convicted had atteneded an execution of another pickpocjet, sometimes stealing from others while the execution was ongoing.

This just clarifies who the enemy is. I don't see a problem.

Who is the enemy?

A sheltered childhood would lead you to change your mind about anything if you saw someone spill a glass of milk. Emotions. Feelings.

What criteria would allow for someone to "deserve" death? Is it as a form of revenge, like most "deserved" punishments?

Camus believes that state sanctioned revenge just breeds more violence. The death penalty is not a deterrent, it is something that offends the senses, and it is ultimately served on the platter as a criminal getting their just punishment in revenge.

Either such a revenge is public, to declare that justice has occured, or it does not happen at all. What revenge is a secret and supressed lethal injection? By all accounts, revenge should be public and furious, it should be there for the victims to see.

>Indeed, one must kill publicly or confess that one does. not feel authorized to kill. If society justifies the death penalty by the necessity of the example, it must justify itself by making the publicity necessary (Camus).

Thus, revenge is not a sufficient reason for capital punishment due to the abhorence we have to see death in public. Camus adds that such public exetions only harden the ones who need to be softened and offend the soft. He uses the example of pickpockets. A large majority of pickpockets who were sentenced had viewed the execution of a pickpocket before. Revenge only perpetuates violence.

Camus doesn't think that a muderer _doesn't_ deserve a punishment, but rather that a murder in any case cannot be accepted.

Camus is just wrong. And the word "murder" is doing a lot of work in hiding the deception. It hides the artificial difference between cases where you cause the death of someone. Murder is used, almost by definition, to classify the _unjustified_ causing of death. But there are many cases where causing of death is justified, and we all agree; for instance you are fine to cause the death of someone who is actively trying to kill you. And it is a very logical progression from there, to accept the causing of death in many other cases. For example, you shouldn't have to wait for an attacker to pull the trigger of a lethal weapon before defending yourself, you should be free to ANTICIPATE his action and cause his death preemptively. And you can use this exact same line of reasoning to show that there are a great many cases where causing death is justified. There are destructive and evil people on the planet, and nobody will miss them when they are gone. The same way its good to cull deer, if the population of deer gets out of control... it's just better overall for the environment.

Camus does talk about this in I believe part 3. He doesn't have a problem with killing someone who would cause harm to you. His problem is that the framing of the justification of death by the state is after the case, preventing no harm, and in fact creating harm-see comments above and the article. Secondly, assuming the innocence of the victim is put on society so that allows for execution by the state is just incorrect. It is not justice for a victim but a show for an undeserving audience. I don't think I explained it well, so if you have time, I really encourage reading Camus's article. Even if you don't agree, I still find his reasoning and viewpoints interesting.

> What criteria would allow for someone to "deserve" death?

As a framework - death penalty should be legalized when a majority members of the society support that as a punishment.

When applying that framework - it should be applied for the cases beyond any reasonable doubt.

Once you agree on these principles, all other details can be easily negotiated.

I know that the belief in the majority is a core part of our democracy, but I'd like to challenge it for a moment here. First, does common belief make sonething right? Lets say society A has a majority vote that says people who murder are horrible and should be executed. Society B says no, murder is okay, because the majority say its okay. So, is murder right or wrong? The point is that a crowd doesn't always have a right answer. Second, opinions are not homogenous, and popular opinion can be wrong (think geocentric systems, newtonian laws, disease, etc.). A morality by plurality is arbitrary and non-universal which seems to defy the point of moral frameworks.

> The point is that a crowd doesn't always have a right answer... > popular opinion can be wrong

By that logic, all the laws, regulations and norms would possibly be meaningless. So if we were to ignore those, we all would descend into anarchy.

> A morality by plurality is arbitrary and non-universal

In fact, a majority of popular support is a necessary (may not be sufficient) condition for morality of a society. Something is not considered moral if it is not supported by most of the members.

> society A vs society B

irrelevant. Morality based laws in a society generally consider morality only of that society. That's why we have the notion of sovereignty.

How do you define “deserve” in any kind of objective way?

You stop the philosophical navel gazing and use your best judgment. If someone has their hands wrapped around YOUR throat and is actively trying to kill you, you would defend yourself to the death if necessary. And you would clearly claim that you had objective proof that the attacker deserved death. You just apply the same concept, to less immediate forms of attack.

I don’t find this a convincing argument. This works as an argument for permitting lethal force to end a life-threatening attack. But once someone is already detained there’s no way that killing them meaningfully increases public protection over just keeping them locked up.

That's just your opinion. The point of my comment is to show there are cases where even you agree causing the death of someone is "deserved". Once we both agree there are deserving cases, the rest is just a disagreement about where to draw the line. You have your preference, I have mine.

No, we don’t agree it’s “deserved” in any cases. I agree in the self defense case it’s justifiable based on near certainty about the outcome if you don’t respond with lethal force. That has nothing to do with “deserved”, which is always subjective unless we discover some universal moral code we’re all bound to abide by. So I think where we agree is that it’s all opinion.

What is under discussion is the taking of a life. You think it's fine to take a life in certain circumstances, but object in others. Fine. But you have no more a hold on the truth (moral or otherwise) than someone who draws the line somewhere else. So your objection comes down to a complaint about my use of the word "deserve". Fine, use a different word. It doesn't change in any useful real-world way the point, instead it's just typical philosophical navel gazing. The fact is we all agree there are times we should indeed take a life, it's a category that exists, even for your worldview.

Exactly, it’s about the choice of word but I don’t think it’s meaningless semantics.

Yes, it does. are you familiar with the rules for perjury? Once someone lies under oath, everything they say gets thrown out. The logic being that others cannot know what words can be trusted; you are done as a witness.

For some crimes, everything they are should be thrown out, because society should not be burdened with the trust that these people will not commit another similar crime. Removing them from society protects the very fabric of our society: our trust in others.

Child rapists, serial killers… these fuckers need to die, or society learns that we catch and release such predators back into the world. Where they become someone’s neighbors. Are you willing to let them move into next door to you? You think keeping them alive protects society?

Pay for your work. An eye for an eye. Equivalent exchange. Justice for any crimes perpetuated.

Such are some timeless principles that brings fairness.

And to counter on Camus when he writes:

> that there is no proof that the death penalty ever made a single murderer recoil when he had made up his mind, whereas clearly it had no effect but one of fascination on thousands of criminals;

This is where he's wrong. Having such a law alters the calculus of people's decisions. It's a simple first principle. It's one net of many nets for would be offenders, if it alters even one of their minds it's worth it.

Camus wrote interesting fictions

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