According to the philosopher Hobbes and most political traditions, the state can ask for its subjects, or citizens to lay down their lives in its defence, because the State has the obligation to protect them. However, in defence of life, the state can also kill.
Western traditions tend to support the death penalty, stemming from Plato, who argues for retribution in The Laws, Book Nine, Aquinas, who holds that the penalty imposes complete prevention on the murderer in the Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 146 and Kant who affirms the right to restitution can be exercised by the state in The Metaphysics of Morals 6.332. Beccaria and Camus oppose on the grounds of the right to life. Yet the further understanding of both rights resists elucidation.
Capital Punishment and the State's Obligation to Protect
In the case of war, the rights and obligations are tragically apparent, but on the question of capital punishment, there are many loose ends. According to Amnesty International, some countries assert the death penalty as the punishment of an individual found guilty of a crime that deliberately destroys a person's life. Others impose it for drug smuggling and serious fraud. The faults of the past might lead citizens to be scandalised over the death penalty for theft, witchcraft and forgery, but these were crimes that in the past judgement of sober minds threatened life, according to the mentality of their age. For Beccaria, past barbarities should teach citizens the wrongness of the death penalty.
Capital Punishment: the State Protects and Yet Destroys
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