On the death penalty: fragmentary meditations

Abstract

This short reflection attempts to meditate on the premise around which both proponents-of and those-opposed-to the death penalty hinge their arguments. And it makes the case that in-lieu of their premise being antonymous, or at least antagonistic — as might be expected — it is exactly the same: that even though they might come to diametrically opposite conclusions, both sides rely on the notion that life is sacred. By doing so, they are conceiving of it in the abstract, as abstractions; and thus, ignoring — or, at least, temporarily set aside — the fact that each life, and each living, including one’s own, is irreducibly singular and should be considered in its concrete materiality, situation, and context. More importantly, in order to decide in the abstract, what is actually done is to decide — a priori — what counts as a life.

This piece, thus, opens the potentially disconcerting possibility that — by acknowledging lives in their immanence, and attempting to respond to them as such — one’s very responsibility lies in the fact that every moment of living is an act of choosing who, and what, one kills.