Reiman Against the Death Penalty
Where We Are
We've read a short article by Louis Pojman defending the death penalty. In Pojman's article, he defends the death penalty on both retributivist and deterrence grounds, and the version of the deterrence argument that he gives is adapted from another prominent proponent of the death penalty, Ernest van den Haag. For this class we're getting a perspective that is critical of the death penalty, by an author - Reiman - who is responding to van den Haag.
Jeffrey Reiman
Jeffrey Reiman is emeritus professor of philosophy at the American University (recall that means he is retired). He has written seven books (including one death penalty for-and-against book with Louis Pojman) and over a hundred articles, mostly on criminal justice and issues about the value of life, including a book about abortion. His exchanges with van den Haag and Pojman about the death penalty are probably his most famous work.
Immanuel Kant
The Death Penalty and Civilization
The reading for this class is Reiman's article 'Justice, Civilization, and the Death Penalty: Answering van den Haag'. In the article, Reiman responds to both retributivist and deterrence arguments for the death penalty. It is a somewhat long article by the standards of what we have been reading for this class, but shorter than it looks since there are a number of short pages with long footnotes, and much of it should be relatively easy to read, with the very notable exception of some extended references to the historical philosophers Kant and Hegel that I will explain in class. Still, make sure that you leave yourself adequate time.
G.F.W. Hegel
As you read, pay close attention to make sure that you are able to identify where Reiman and Pojman disagree about what follows from the idea that murderers deserve to die. This is the most important contribution of Reiman's article.
(Don’t blame me if you click on the following video and it traumatizes you about Hegel forever, but deepfake videos of dead philosophers singing took philosophy Twitter by storm in spring 2021, the last time I was teaching this class.)