Quote of the Week: Vladimir Soloviev
“The special evil and horror of murder consist, of course, not in the actual taking of life but in the intrinsic renunciation of a basic moral norm, to sever decisively by one’s own resolution and action the connection of common human solidarity regarding the actual fellow creature standing before me, who is the same as I, a bearer of the image and likeness of God. But this resolution to put an end to a man more clearly and completely than in simple murder is expressed in the death penalty, where there is absolutely nothing apart from this resolution and carrying it out. Society only has left an animus interficiendi in absolutely pure form with respect to the executed criminal, completely free from all those physiological and psychological conditions and motives which darkened and obscured the essence of the matter in the eyes of the criminal himself, whether he committed the murder from calculation of gain or under the influence of a less shameful person. There can be no such complexities of motivation in the death penalty; the entire business is exposed here: its single goal — to put to an end to this man in order that he not be in the world at all. The death penalty is murder, as such, absolute murder that is in principle the denial of a fundamental moral attitude toward man. “
–Vladimir Soloviev, “On the Death Penalty” in Politics, Law & Morality: Essays by V.S. Soloviev. Ed. and trans. Vladimir Wozniuk (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 180-1.
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Today is the March for Life. Abortion, one of the great evils of any age, rightfully should be opposed. But we must remember why: the dignity of the human person and the right all humanity has to be respected because they are made in the image and likeness of God. Let us remember the full spectrum of life issues today — to be a true march for life!
It is in this spirit I put up this quote on the death penalty. What Soloviev says here is also true with abortion — and it shows what connects the two together, and why both are grave evils.
Thank you for this.
As a fellow gets older, he sees his country differently. What crept up on me over the years is the price we pay for the mythology of The Individual in America.
There is no coherent concept individual who is not in relation-to something. We can’t kill the individual without shattering that relation. Conservatives will bellow, “kill them and let God sort it out in the end.” Chuckle, chuckle.
How dare they.
Jeff
You are welcome. You are right – the myth of rugged individualism – acts contrary to the state of things as they are (interdependence) and comes at too great a moral cost. Once it is overcome, I think more people will be able to see the interconnection of all life issues.
I have long felt that what makes the death penalty so horrifying is the long, slow, procedural aspect of it. Some seem to think that the more appeals and reviews that are available to those sentenced to death, the more fairly they are being treated. On the other hand, I think it is extraordinarily cruel for them to have to wait years or even decades while the machinery of the state grinds toward their execution.
David
Have you read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot? If not, you would find it interesting, for he puts his own experiences with the death penalty into it. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to death. It was only when he was at the firing squad itself he was given his pardon. His description of the inner turmoil — and the destruction it wrought on his health from that time on — presents a side which is rarely mentioned (because few people have ever survived that far into the process to tell others what it is like). So the process of the wait is bad, the process of being there is cruel and unusual punishment (let alone Solovyov’s point here).
The quote offered does not lay out the full extent of Soloviev’s argument, which not only addresses the death penalty, but refutes key points of Aquinas’ argument. He (Soloviev) states that an essence of Christian faith is that all men can be redeemed. By carrying out a death sentence, three things happen. One, the possibility of redemption is removed. Second, the executors (both de facto and de jure) deny the basic tenet of redemption and in effect state that there are those who are beyond redemption. Finally, since the belief system of Christianity holds that there is only one unforgivable sin – the sin against the Holy Spirit, carrying out a death sentence violates this belief inn a profound manner. If the sin against the Holy Spirit is the belief that one is so great a sinner that not even God can forgive, then by carrying out the death penalty, man becomes guilty of hubris in assuming to possess the knowledge of God. Soloviev’s argument is clear and sound on every level, the death penalty is not consistent with Christian faith and philosophy.
Jim
Right, I didn’t want to post the whole of the piece for obvious reasons; I hoped people might take an interest and read it in context.