Aristotle, Teleology, & The Death

Aristotle, Teleology, & the Death Penalty

Capital punishment is a controversial issue in today's society. It is questionable whether man is justified morally to take another man's life, particular when it comes to an official or sanctioned killing. There are countless arguments for and against capital punishment. Some maintain that people deserve to be punished. Others suggest it is not man's role to punish, because that is God's role. Aristotle created a notion that came to be known as teleology that can help to understand the ethical issue. Within this notion, Aristotle offers four causes that can help to explain the why for anything related to why related question. The question regarding capital punishment is why enact capital punishment? If considering this why question there can be made arguments for and against capital punishment, but if considering a treatment according to Aristotelian principles of teleology, capital punishment is ethically wrong because the end of the punishment is killing and not what we assume to be the end of the punishment and that is the prevention of other crimes and punishment for wrong-doing. Teleology means the end of the process, and in consider capital punishment as an ethical issue the end of the process must be considered first. The end to capital punishment is to put to death the person guilty of the crime. However, this is not necessarily the end, or reason for capital punishment. Capital punishment is intended to punish a person by taking his or her life. But there can be a second interpretation of the ethical issue of capital punishment and that is that the end of capital punishment is the prevention of a crime in the first place. Thus according to teleology, capital punishment could be considered to have two different ends. As an ethical issue, capital punishment is a much deeper issue than simply molding a bronze statue, which is the end to the Aristotelian example. Much can be left up to interpretation, and therefore a deeper look at the two possibilities for capital punishment viewed from the Aristotelian viewpoint on causality and teleology. If the end product is necessary to explain the event, then there are two ways to explain capital punishment. Capital punishment is capital and thus death is the final result. But also, punishment implies punishment for doing something wrong and thus the punishment is intended to prevent something from being done wrong in the first place, and that is a second possible end. However, both of these ends are based on the assumption that the capital punishment, or killing someone, is doing something other than killing someone. In fact, both of these arguments are for the same end and this creating some kind of good or doing something right through capital punishment. Consider the four causes when relating to this depiction of capital punishment. The first cause is the 'material' cause, or that of which the final product is created. In the case of this example of capital punishment, the material cause is a crime, or a criminal person, as the person that has violated law is will be the one that will be altered through the process of capital punishment. The formal cause is the punishment, or a punished person. It is what will be. It will be a punishment for somebody that violates a law that offers capital punishment as a possible punishment for what has been done wrong. Just like a bronze statue is the formal cause of an Aristotelian example, the punishment is the form cause of capital punishment. The efficient cause or the cause of the change to a punishment is whatever causes the capital punishment. This is not the electric chair or the injection needles, but the law and judge's decision which causes the capital punishment. Lastly, the final end for capital punishment is to prevent crime and punish those who commit crime. According to this model, committing a certain crime will lead to capital punishment. Therefore the end will result in fewer crimes and lesser trouble because the fear or threat of capital punishment will deter the breaking of laws in the future. There exists a second model which looks at capital punishment from a very different perspective. It is similar to the first, but is less abstract and understands the process of the death penalty on a much more superficial level in that it does not assume that punishments prevent crime or that people are punished from a crime. The material cause of this perspective is a person. It is a person that will be acted upon to reach the final end. The formal cause of what it will be is a dead person. Just like when bronze is a material cause and the form of what it is to be a is a state of the statue, a person as a material cause will take the form of a dead person after facing capital punishment. The efficient cause in this model is what will be the source of the change. The source of the change in this model is the method of execution or the act of killing another person. It is not the law that is doing the punishing, but a process which is doing the killing. The final cause of the capital punishment is death to the person. In comparing these two conclusions in an application of Aristotle's causality, both seem to fit the model. The second view, however, is much more accurate because the final end is what really happens. Somebody is killed and a dead body is the result. In the first example, it is subjectively imposed that the end will be a reduction of a criminal activity. Both these models fit the definitions applied by Aristotle, but the nature of teleology means that there is no bias and that the end is all that matters. The processes of the causes create an end result. Having an understanding such as the first model implies ends that are not necessarily correlated to the means. For example, in the bronze statue example it is art which is the efficient cause and not the man. The man is the one that creates the statue, but it is art that allows the statue to be created. Similarly, with the death penalty example it is not the law and threat of capital punishment or the crime committed that means one will be sentenced to capital punishment that kills a person or sentences him or her to death. Rather, it is man or the electric chair or the killer that allows the death to be possible. Using Aristotle's teleology to understand capital punishment helps one to understand that there is not necessarily causality between the threat of punishment and preventing crime, but there is one end that is for sure resulting from capital punishment and that is the killing of a living person and a living person ending up as a dead person. In the end, it is the second model which shows that capital punishment is immoral that I most agree with because it is the only guaranteed result from capital punishment. The second model is undeniable. There will be a living person, who will be acted upon, and who will be subjected to a man killing him, and it will result in death. This is the end of the actual process. Any other reasoning is what we believe to be happening but it is not actually proved to be the case. There is no evidence according to Aristotle's logic that capital punishment is preventing crimes and punishing people. Punishment is not necessarily even man's role and measuring punishment is impossible. Furthermore, punishment can be considered to be outside of man's domain and the role of God and God is not subject to these laws or an end because God is above and beyond nature. While this is getting into a different argument, the final cause of capital punishment is death. We may say we kill someone to punish them or act as a deterrent towards future crimes, but when someone is put to death it is in order to kill him or him. Other reasons are not validated according to teleology. Aristotle has created a highly complex, yet highly effective system to understand the causes of that what exists in nature. As capital punishment exists in nature, it can therefore be evaluated according to Aristotle's theories on teleology. The issue at stake is whether capital punishment, as an ethical issue, is right or wrong. Although that is highly simplifying the issue, it must be determined whether the ends of capital punishment achieve its intended goals. This is, of course, assuming that capital punishment is intended either to deter criminals from violating laws and/or to punish those that commit crimes. From an outside perspective, it seems natural that capital punishment does achieve its ends. Surely there must be somebody out there who refrained from committing some heinous act and breaking the law in fear of capital punishment. And surely there is some horrible person who has committed countless violent and despicable acts and we need to punish him or her for doing so. The first model presented her takes this view of capital punishment. However, if evaluating capital punishment from the second model, and that is that a living being is killed, there is justification. In the first model, which is inaccurate in making the assumption that capital punishment is ethical, false notions are applied to the model. There are no guarantees that killing equal will prevent further killing. If considering the causality according to the four forms of teleology the logic of capital punishment is completely backwards, completely lacking, and all arguments in favor of capital punishment are based upon notions that we impose, but that do not actually exist in nature. Rather, capital punishment must be understood for what it really is, and that is the killing of a living person. A person committing a crime has no relationship to the fact that the person will be killed. Bronze being mined does not mean it will become a statue. We assign value to the bronze to turn it into a statue, just like we assign our intentions to kill a person as punishment to something that is really just killing somebody. The death penalty is unethical therefore because it assumes things to be true that are not necessarily true. It is wrong to make false assumptions in regards to something so powerful as the death penalty, and thus the death penalty should be reconsidered. Aristotle's logic is genius and powerful and shows things for what they really are. Capital punishment is just killing and making a statue is just making a statue. Nobody is necessarily being honored by a statue, just like nobody is necessarily being punished by capital punishment. The forms of cause help to elicit new realities to things we thought we understood.