(The following is a parody of "Why I Write Such Good Books," which appears in Friedrich Nietzsche's Ecce Homo)
I am one thing, my pizzas are another matter. Before I discuss them, let me touch on the question of their being eaten or not eaten. I'll do this quickly and casually, for the time for this question certainly has not come yet. The time for me hasn't come yet: some pizzas are eaten posthumously.
Some day institutions will be needed in which men make and bake pizzas as I conceive of making and baking them. But that today one doesn't follow my recipes is not even understandable, it seems right to me.
When Chef Boyardee once complained that my pizzas were inedible, I told him that was expected--to really taste my pizza would raise one to a higher level of existence than "modern" men could attain.
My triumph is precisely the opposite of Dominos: I say "My pizzas are not eaten, my pizzas will not be eaten."
Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including pizzas, than he already knows. A pizza that contains nothing but flavors that lie altogether beyond the possibility of any frequent experience--that is the first taste for a new series of experiences.
This has been all said for the benefit of Italians; for everywhere else I have eaters--nothing but first-rate palates. But to eat Italian, to taste Italian--I can do anything, but not that. I am the anti-Italian par excellence and thus a world-historical monster--I am, in Greek and not only in Greek, the Anti-Papa John.
Whoever is related to me in the height of his aspirations will experience veritable ecstacies of flavor; I pick from tomato plants that no bird ever reached in its flight, I use garlic from ground onto which no foot ever strayed. I have been told that it is impossible to put down one of my pizzas--that they even disturb nightly rest.
Before me, it was not known what could be done with mozzarella--what could be done with cheese in general. The art of pasteurizing and grating was discovered only by me. With my four cheese and garlic special, I soared a thousand miles beyond what was called pizza before.
May I here venture the surmise that I know tomatos? Ah, what a dangerous, creeping, subterranean fruit she is! And yet so agreeable!
And lest I leave any doubt about my very decent and strict views in these matters, let me cite the following proposition: "The preaching of thin-crusts amounts to a public incitement to antinature. Every kind of contempt for garlic, every impurification of it by means of the concept 'impure,' is the crime par excellence against pizza--is the real sin against the culinary spirit of pizza."
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Death Penalty
Much of the debate surrounding the death penalty focuses on the issues of deterrence and the fairness with which such punishment is meted out. However, I believe that most defenders of the death penalty do not really care about the deterrence issue, and though they might admit that the administration of the penalty is unfair, they would argue that in cases where the person executed is guilty of their crime, justice demands that such a person be executed. My question is, is this correct? To be specific, let us consider a case where a man has killed another person, and where the killer was of "sound mind" when he committed the crime (it was not a crime of passion or due to mental illness, and so forth). Let us further assume that the victim in no way "deserved" their death (e.g. the person was not a criminal or vile in any way). If the killer is not executed, will a breach of justice occurred?
Let us consider what I take to be the strongest argument for the claim that justice demands the killer be executed. The argument goes something like this: When the killer killed the innocent person, a loss of life occurred, a loss that should not have happened. Normally, I suppose, when people are unjustly deprived of something, we think that compensating the victim will restore the imbalance caused by the unjust loss (thus the "scales of justice"). For example, if I steal $5 dollars from you, returning that $5 dollars to you will make things "right" again.
However, this model for thinking about justice clearly will not work in the case of death. If I kill you, there is nothing I can do to bring you back to life, so the imbalance cannot be restored. Is there another way to restore the imbalance? Well, if the killer is executed, now his life has ended, too, and we might think that what this does is make the situation of killer and killed equal. Considering the stolen money case again, it would be the equivalent of taking $10 from the thief, even though the person it was stolen from never gets the $5 back (it needs to be $10 so that the thief is down $5 altogether).
A few points of clarification are in order to avoid possible confusions. The defender of capital punishment should perhaps not say that in executing the killer we are treating the killer the same way the killer treated his victim. As Kant famously pointed out (snooty name dropping, I know), how we describe an action makes a big difference to our moral assessment of the action. If the killer unjustly killed the victim, then the defender of capital punishment may be in the awkward position of saying that the killer should be unjustly killed, too. But of course the defender does not want to say that, since the defender wants to say that the execution is just! Notice, too, that the critic of capital punishment cannot simply say that executing the killer is as bad as killing the victim without begging the question against the defender of capital punishment. The defender will say that there is an asymmetry in the two killings: in the first, the death is unjust; in the second, it is just, and so they are not morally equivalent. That we make such distinctions all the time (unproblematically) surely counts in favor of the defender of capitol punishment. For example, if I grab you off the street and lock you up in a cell (and you are innocent), this is unjust. If the police catch me and as a result of what I've done lock me up in a cell, this is fair.
I have purposely not talked about the actual criminal justice system of the United States up to this point, but if we consider it, things get even more complicated, not less. We simply do not think that, in general, justice requires that either victims be recompensated by their attackers or that attackers get treated the same way as their victims. For example, if I steal 1 million dollars in a bank heist and blow the money, I am required to go to jail, not pay the bank back. Or if a person commits a horrible rape, the rapist is not sentenced to be raped. In our system, we use jail time as a means of punishment, and use the length of sentence to reflect the severity of the crime committed. If this is true in general, why should murders be any different? Consider rape again. If we do not think the rapist should be raped in turn, and if we acknowledge that no amount of jail time will recompensate the victim for their suffering, why should we differ with respect to murder? Now, the defender of capital punishment might say that in the case of rape, executing the rapist would be too stern a penalty; that is, the penalty is not commensurate with the crime, whereas in the case of murder, execution is commensurate with the crime. But that still leaves the defender of execution in the position of explaining why raping rapists is not an acceptable method of punishment. Or is it? Maybe the defender of executions should say that such punishments are not only acceptable, but required. Does the logic of capital punishment mandate such a position? Another way to put the question may be this: if, in general, we are willing to abandon an "eye for an eye" approach to punishment, on what grounds, if any, can we make an exception for capital punishment?
Let us consider what I take to be the strongest argument for the claim that justice demands the killer be executed. The argument goes something like this: When the killer killed the innocent person, a loss of life occurred, a loss that should not have happened. Normally, I suppose, when people are unjustly deprived of something, we think that compensating the victim will restore the imbalance caused by the unjust loss (thus the "scales of justice"). For example, if I steal $5 dollars from you, returning that $5 dollars to you will make things "right" again.
However, this model for thinking about justice clearly will not work in the case of death. If I kill you, there is nothing I can do to bring you back to life, so the imbalance cannot be restored. Is there another way to restore the imbalance? Well, if the killer is executed, now his life has ended, too, and we might think that what this does is make the situation of killer and killed equal. Considering the stolen money case again, it would be the equivalent of taking $10 from the thief, even though the person it was stolen from never gets the $5 back (it needs to be $10 so that the thief is down $5 altogether).
A few points of clarification are in order to avoid possible confusions. The defender of capital punishment should perhaps not say that in executing the killer we are treating the killer the same way the killer treated his victim. As Kant famously pointed out (snooty name dropping, I know), how we describe an action makes a big difference to our moral assessment of the action. If the killer unjustly killed the victim, then the defender of capital punishment may be in the awkward position of saying that the killer should be unjustly killed, too. But of course the defender does not want to say that, since the defender wants to say that the execution is just! Notice, too, that the critic of capital punishment cannot simply say that executing the killer is as bad as killing the victim without begging the question against the defender of capital punishment. The defender will say that there is an asymmetry in the two killings: in the first, the death is unjust; in the second, it is just, and so they are not morally equivalent. That we make such distinctions all the time (unproblematically) surely counts in favor of the defender of capitol punishment. For example, if I grab you off the street and lock you up in a cell (and you are innocent), this is unjust. If the police catch me and as a result of what I've done lock me up in a cell, this is fair.
I have purposely not talked about the actual criminal justice system of the United States up to this point, but if we consider it, things get even more complicated, not less. We simply do not think that, in general, justice requires that either victims be recompensated by their attackers or that attackers get treated the same way as their victims. For example, if I steal 1 million dollars in a bank heist and blow the money, I am required to go to jail, not pay the bank back. Or if a person commits a horrible rape, the rapist is not sentenced to be raped. In our system, we use jail time as a means of punishment, and use the length of sentence to reflect the severity of the crime committed. If this is true in general, why should murders be any different? Consider rape again. If we do not think the rapist should be raped in turn, and if we acknowledge that no amount of jail time will recompensate the victim for their suffering, why should we differ with respect to murder? Now, the defender of capital punishment might say that in the case of rape, executing the rapist would be too stern a penalty; that is, the penalty is not commensurate with the crime, whereas in the case of murder, execution is commensurate with the crime. But that still leaves the defender of execution in the position of explaining why raping rapists is not an acceptable method of punishment. Or is it? Maybe the defender of executions should say that such punishments are not only acceptable, but required. Does the logic of capital punishment mandate such a position? Another way to put the question may be this: if, in general, we are willing to abandon an "eye for an eye" approach to punishment, on what grounds, if any, can we make an exception for capital punishment?
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