RE: Moral justification for the execution of criminals of war?
August 15, 2022 at 6:24 pm
(This post was last modified: August 15, 2022 at 6:57 pm by bennyboy.)
(August 15, 2022 at 6:05 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: However, if a person thinks that people shouldn't kill people, and if a society develops around this idealized form of organization - the reason that you don't kill someone who kills has nothing to do with whatever they did. You....shouldn't....kill. It's a simple rule. It's not one we have to agree with to understand. Do you understand?"You. . . shouldn't. . . kill (people)," you mean. Again, we've established that you not only kill animals, but relish the act of doing it for fun. So harm and suffering in and of themselves are not the objection-- there's something special about people, ALL people, even the greatest pedophiliac murderer, that is sacrosanct to you. Why would that be? I'm saying that human life is NOT intrinsically valuable, and that to claim it is is either an emotional opiinion or a religious one-- in either case, irrational. All the talk about morality of execution-as-murder takes human exceptionalism as axiomatic-- but I do not accept that axiom.
The social contract can have a rational veneer: "If we do not agree that killing (people) is wrong, then ourselves or our children may be killed. And that would be counterproductive."
Sounds rational, but the truth is more like: "I'm a social animal with instincts for love, and the idea that someone I care about might be harmed is abhorrent. If one of my children were killed, it would be emotionally and psychologically devastating, something I know to be true because even imagining it is terrifying. Therefore, no matter what, I must support the idea that killing people is wrong." But there's a clear alternative-- killing GOOD people is wrong. Set about to making sure you and your children are good people, and you don't have to worry.
As I said before, if you don't give a shit about something, you don't worry too much about the morality of it. It's ALL emotional, and any rational argument is just spackled on after the fact. It's not rational turtles all the way down.