I saw a book on the death penalty that claimed to have an essay by CS Lewis. Knowing that CS Lewis was an apologetic writer for Christianity, I surmised that as all religious people are moral hypocrites who are only interested in supporting the status quo of morality (which CS Lewis makes convenient for himself by supporting the concept of “moral intuition” and thereby reifying his socially contingent, pre-existing sentiments) he would be a supporter of the death penalty. No doubt, I opened the book and saw him peddling the very 2-bit sophistry in support of the “capital” punishment as I expected. Seeing no reason to read on, I immediately closed it and tossed it back onto the pile.
C.S. Lewis argued against the "Humanitarian Theory" of punishment, which sought to replace retributive justice with rehabilitation and deterrence, by contending that this approach actually strips criminals of their human rights and dignity. In his essay "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," Lewis posits that if punishment is no longer based on "just deserts" (giving someone what they deserve for a crime) but solely on the "cure" of the offender or the protection of society, then the state gains the terrifying power to indefinitely detain individuals not because they committed a crime, but because they are deemed "curable" or "dangerous" by experts. He famously argued that under this system, a punishment could theoretically last forever because the "cure" is never complete, removing the concept of justice entirely and replacing it with a form of benevolent tyranny where the offender loses the moral standing to claim they are being treated unjustly. Lewis concluded that the traditional retributive view, which limits punishment to what is proportionate to the crime, is the only framework that truly respects the criminal as a moral agent responsible for their actions.
>>25359803The actual Catholic Church supports the death penalty. Modern nuswas present a bunch of pilpul to try and ban it.
>>25359810Well yes that is a good thing. The alternative would be to punish a criminal, have him leave prison and then he breaks the law again. I don't care about "just" punishments i care about not having a maniac on the loose. If he can't be rehabilitated he should either spend the rest of his life in prison, or get executed by the state. Lewis is just performing emotional masturbation with his desires to enact justice instead of doing what's objectively best for society.
>>25359803>I surmised that as all religious people are moral hypocrites who are only interested in supporting the status quo of moralityFuck off, rabbi.
>>25359810Well everything here he predicts is completely accurate in what the current situation surrounding criminal insanity treatment has turned into. If you commit a crime it's better to just go to jail than the forever watch of the criminally insane label.And I doubt anyone in the punishment/treatment of the insane claims that they are trying to punish people for being insane and instead insist they are rehabilitating their mental state
>>25360294You are leaning into what is generally the third approach. Broken down arguments fall under >punishment/deterrent >reform/rehabilitation >separation from the restSo how would you feel if the criminal elements were removed from society and dangerous people separated from others to prevent them from hurting people, but the place they are sent to is a pleasant place where they can enjoy and live a satisfactory life?
>>25359803Whats wrong with punishing the wicked?
>>25360331Sometimes people learn their lesson and become better Sometimes the wrong person is punished That's basically it
>>25360313Under the assumption that they can contribute to their own life and are self sufficient then there's nothing wrong with it. Like those Norwegian prison programs where the prisoners are sent to a remote island where they grow their own crops. On the removal of the criminal element from society, it is pretty funny since I saw a study recently that claimed only a very small percentage of the population commits the majority of crime. Repeat offenders are the main contributors to this. Literally 5 to 8% of the population commits around 75 to 80% of all crimes. Removing them from society would be a good thing. Lewis might moralise and claim people should get punished to fulfill his desire for justice and then just set loose back to the general public, but a policy of trying to rehabilitate criminals is much better. Those who can't be rehabilitated should be sequestered from society permanently.
>>25360331Nothing, it just isn't a priority. I agree with the above anon that separation form society (by physical isolation or death) is much more important. We used to have far away colonies or working in galleys for that but it isn't practical anymore, although some states have tried making some sort of penal colonies again. Much more important even is restritution to the victims (which is by far the most improtant part to me and is ignored by both the punishment and rehabilitation faggots). Assessement should always go into the sense of restritution/compensation (as much as possible) > isolation (including death if you do it) >> rehabilitation/punishemnt (whatever, doesn't matter much). Apparently I'm in the 0.5% minority opinion on this. I hate our justice system.
>>25360336Historically it usually was something like exile and wealthy or noble people lived comfortably in exile. I might be misremembering but for example Dante was exiled which functions as separating him a labelled criminal from his home and lived an ok life well enough to write the Divine Comedy
>>25360341Yes I agree, I didn't mention restitution to the victims in my post, I just assumed it would take place, i was only talking about what to do with the criminal.
>>25360351Yes well our very dear states and their 70% female judicial system have exactly the opposite "values" and value order. >>25360336>Literally 5 to 8% of the population commits around 75 to 80% of all crimes.Source? Because I'm surprised it's that diluted. I expected even more concentration, unless "crimes" means parking tickets. Bukele got 1.3% of the population in jail and serious violent crime decreased by a factor of 20.
>>25360362I think it included all crimes, so even light things like parking tickets probably give an incorrect reading. I'll see if I can find that study after work.
I am religious but also vehemently anti capital punishment. But you're probably right that a lot of religious people, by which I mean Christian people do support capital punishment because Christianity for them is a form of kantianism.
>>25359810>man who believes God's perfect justice involves eternal punishment (Hell) argues that eternal punishment is badHuh
>>25360372Here's one for Sweden, showing that 1% of the populace are responsible for a lot of violent crimes. Couldn't find the study i originally read about the UK https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3969807/
>>25360334>>25360334>Sometimes the wrong person is punishedSure>Sometimes people learn their lesson and become betterHa. Ha.
>>25361307Wonder what color that 1% are
>>25359803honestly anon, a lot of your claims against religion would work better if you weren't so wishy washy and cynical when it comes down to stuff like this.its very difficult to know when subjectivity , objectiviy and the inbetween between those two really start with you and people like you.
>>25360336>Lewis might moralise and claim people should get punished to fulfill his desire for justice and then just set loose back to the general public, but a policy of trying to rehabilitate criminals is much better. Those who can't be rehabilitated should be sequestered from society permanently.I don't think that is how he would see it.is it really just a specific minority that does all the crimes , I do think he would have some nuance about it , also what is the definition of punishment is also kind of flexible for him.
>>25361648meh. Even if I engaged religitards with charitability and good faith, they wouldnt change their beliefs. these people are truly sick in the head. whenever I try to sincerely argue with one of them they basically just cop out of the conversation with some shit about how they have faith or some thought terminating cliche like "we just disagree." I prefer to just shit on them.
>>25360636The eternal punishment is seperation from God that the person themselves chose. It's kind of like a kid losing at some game, deciding they won't play it out of spite, and then being assmad about people who want to play/enjoy the game. You see it in people who maintain the pretense they're displaying a form of superiority by denigrating sports (when the actual reason, 99% of the time, is simply because they're unathletic).
>>25361817ok but how come I can choose to be reunited with god at any point up until the moment I die? Denying you the choice to reunite with God, if your soul is actually immortal, is itself an eternal punishment. you cant put all the blame on the person in hell when god is the one who put an arbitrary deadline on when you get to believe in him. thats certainly not respecting someones rationality and freedom.
>>25361826You have the choice to live your life in a Godly way and diminish sin as best you can. If you fail to do that through conscious choice and action you seperate yourself from God; that itself is punishment. As far as eternity in the sense of infinite "time" is concerned it's a mortal concept. Expressing it in that way is reductive like when fedoras say things like "oh I can just be as evil as I want and then say I'm sorry just before I die". No, for reasons that should be obvious to you, you can't.
>>25361839You didn't answer the question.
>>25361840I did. I don't believe conceptualizing punishment as carrying across infinite time as we mortally experience it is valid. You know now there are things you should do and things you shouldn't and refusing to reflect on this is a conscious decision governed by your own free will. You sleep in the bed you've made for yourself.
>>25361845so you dont believe that the soul experiences time or can change after death?
>>25361849>so you dont believe that the soul experiences timeI don't know but my guess would be "time" isn't a thing unless you're alive. >can change after deathI don't know but my guess is death is representative of a point of demarcation.
>>25360362>>25360372I've heard it too somewhere but can't remember where. Most crime is committed by a small minority composed of repeating offenders and that just makes sense if you think about it. For example, losing your vcard seemed like a big deal and you might have been apprehensive/nervous about it. But once you've had sex it isn't such a big deal to do it again and you don't reflect on it as much at all. It's the same as getting into fights. If you haven't been in a fight the idea of punching someone in the face can seem scary/wrong and not something you'd want to do or be involved in. However, if you've been in a few fights hitting someone in the face isn't something you're apprehensive about and you're more likely to violently assert yourself again. Also, there's a book called The Face of Battle about how most of the killing in wars is a minority of soldiers. Most people intentionally fire their weapons in a way that won't actually hit anyone and there's a big hill to get over in order to get someone to take actions that kill/harm another human. Another book called On Killing talks about how modern training methods have overcome the inherent disposition not to harm others and how this has lead to massive amounts of PTSD and mental health problems in soldiers/former soldiers.
>>25359810>a punishment could last forever if you made it about curing someonenotably societies with retributive justice have never permanently jailed or enslaved or killed their criminals i guess. and it's not like what is deemed criminal in those societies is static anyways. everything i read from and about cs lewis gives me the impression that he is genuinely kind of dumb.
>>25362348You need to work on your reading comprehension, bro.
>>25362348I don't like Lewis much but holy shit you are retarded
>>25362366>>25362369how am i wrong? what am i missing? all the shit he complains about can obviously apply to societies preoccupied with enacting 'justice'. states in societies with retributive justice have the same power. experts can deem people dangerous and deserving of punishment and lock them up indefinitely. the criminal in these societies is not deemed deserving of being taken seriously, has no right to complain about being treated unfairly. the idea that you can retain people's dignity and human rights by throwing them in a jail and subsequently murdering them is laughable at best.
>>25362378It's obvious you're filtered by what Lewis is saying. Hint: Lewis doesn't say that lifelong sentences aren't just and the point he is making is about the posture a government takes.
>>25362405yeah and the fact that he thinks lifelong sentences can be just indicates that he's full of shit and his whole criticism is just vibes because he's a dumbfuck christcuck realist about justice. his entire concern deflates when the exact same problems can and do arise in his "just" le epic punishment-loving (veiled sadistic) society. what he criticizes doesn't cause any problems that aren't at least in equal measure present in what he defends impliclty.
>>25362409>yeah and the fact that he thinks lifelong sentences can be just indicates that he's full of shit No, retard. You were given the hint that Lewis isn't arguing against a specific sentence that can be handed out. >the exact same problems can and do ariseNo, retard. Again, your hint was about the way the government itself postures.Holy shit you're filtered.
>>25362415my point is that he just ends up arguing meaninglessly for vibes if you say his critique isnt conditional on the consequences of rehabilitative justice. how the fuck else are you supposed to interpret "rehabilitative justice strips criminals of their human rights and agency"?
>>25362448Lewis's argument is about what happens to the concept of justice if retribution under the law is changed to labeling people as "curable" or "dangerous". His argument is that doing so strips the idea of agency and responsibility from commiting a crime. He doesn't argue that all penalties are perfectly rational under either system; he points out how a government can put on airs that such is so if it strips the idea of responsibility/agency from a citizen and how such represents a hazard. If you need a case study for this you can look up Jack Unterweger. His crimes are too much to write in detail here but he was sent to mental institution after sexually torturing a woman and soon released (this was despite a long rap sheet); he committed several other similar offenses after this (i.e. raped and tortured multiple women) among several other crimes. He was suspected of multiple murders involving sexual torture and eventually convicted of one. Anyway, he wrote poems and books while he was in prison, including an autobiography about how his socioeconomic status and upbringing lead him to commit crimes, and this convinced a bunch of intellectuals, including Gunter Grass, he had been rehabilitated. Pieces were written about criminal reform and how he had been rehabilitated and should thereby be released. He was released. He then hosted television shows where he talked about rehabilitation and criminal reform, one of his books was taught in schools, he was invited to travel all over as a journalist. However, the guy was actually a serial killer and murdered at least another 9 women all while doing the above. He successfully killed himself in prison after filing an appeal against his conviction for those murders; perversely this meant he was could not be considered "guilty" because the appeal process had not been completed when he died.You can also look at someone like Albert Flick who stabbed his wife to death, was released only to assault more women, was given a light sentence for those because he was "too old to be dangerous", and ended up stabbing a woman to death in front of her kids.
>>25362474that is not how it was described in >>25359810 though, if anything it's the opposite. that post says he argues it's dangerous because that stripping of agency allows for endless punishment and strips criminals of the ability to decry their conditions, and in your example its dangerous because it lead to people getting free under the incorrect belief that they were rehabilitated. which btw is only a miscalculation, meaning the rehabilitation process was improperly applied. ironically the notion of retributive justice is *worse* in this regard because its concern is with whether someone has been 'adequately punished' meaning that inevitably there will be people who commit a crime, get punished, then get sent back on the streets and that without even making an ATTEMPT at rehabilitating them, meaning that there is no reason to assume they will be less likely to reoffend.and again the whole notion that murdering people can ever be 'respecting their agency and human rights' is just nonsense. that whole idea is dubious moralistic liberal enlightenment crap. there is no circumstance in which the existential negation of someone is respectful of their agency and people like lewis should drop this pretense
>>25362526>that is not how it was described in >>25359810 thoughYes it is, anon. You didn't understand it. >dangerous because that stripping of agency allows for endless punishment and strips criminals of the ability to decry their Correct. I expanded on the rationale Lewis was giving because I understand his argument. When you understand an argument you can elaborate on it according to the logic it sets out. You failed to understand what Lewis was arguing from the standpoint of sentences although you were directly told several times this isn't what the argument is about. Therefore, I expanded on Lewis to give you his argument from the standpoint of how subtracting a just punishment, the idea of retributive justice Lewis is arguing, leads to criminals being labeled as "cured" or "dangerous" creating harm. >which btw is only a miscalculation,I was going to do an inb4 because I figured you'd make this mistake and I regret not doing it now. No, anon. It's not simply about "miscalculation" but the nature of rehabilitation being a flawed way to uphold justice and protect citizens be they criminals, victims, or just regular people. The removal of agency and responsibility Lewis mentioned is at the heart of this and you need to reflect on that aspect of his argument because it's obvious you're still missing the point. >and again the whole notion that murdering people can ever be 'respecting their agency and human rights' is just nonsenseStating that doesn't make it so and it's pretty obvious you don't actually understand it. I've given you real world examples of how it leads to hazard and the summary of Lewis you read provides a rationale that you have repeatedly failed to actually argue against. Maybe read the essay that summary is deriving the information from if you're not smart enough to extrapolate from it and thereby understand the argument.
