Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/albert-camus-reflections-on-the-guillotine

by halperter • 18 days ago

51 25 18 days ago

theanarchistlibrary.org

winter_blue• 18 days ago

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.

quantummagic6• 18 days ago

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.

aejm• 18 days ago

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.

quantummagic6• 18 days ago

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.

mieses3• 18 days ago

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

halperter4• 18 days ago

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.

quantummagic6• 18 days ago

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.

RestlessMind2• 17 days ago

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.

jebarker4• 18 days ago

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

quantummagic6• 18 days ago

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.

oreally• 17 days ago

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.

mieses3• 18 days ago

Camus wrote interesting fictions

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)

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