more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
When close attendants say a man deserves death, do not listen; when all the councillors say so, do not listen; when everyone says so, have the case investigated. If he is guilty, put him to death; he was put to death by the whole country.
Gist of Idea
Only put someone to death if the whole population believes it is deserved
Source
Mengzi (Mencius) (The Mengzi (Mencius) [c.332 BCE], 1.B.7)
Book Ref
Mencius: 'Mencius', ed/tr. Lau,D.C. [Penguin 1970], p.67
A Reaction
The jury system is a gesture in this direction. Compare Idea 95. In Mencius's time, no doubt, everyone believed that capital punishment was sometimes right. Nowadays, when many people (e.g. me) reject it, the procedure won't work.
Related Idea
Idea 95 If everyone believes it, it is true [Aristotle]
| 1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
| 1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| 1755 | Errors result from external influence, and should be corrected, not hated [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 8241 | Only put someone to death if the whole population believes it is deserved [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 1660 | It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies, and not come to terms with them [Aristotle] |
| 19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
| 7673 | Retributive punishment is better than being sent to hospital for your crimes [Kant, by Berlin] |
| 21433 | Violation of rights deserves punishment, which is vengeance, rather than restitution [Kant] |
| 24118 | Do away with punishment. Counter-retribution is as bad as the crime [Nietzsche] |
| 18300 | Whenever we have seen suffering, we have wanted the revenge of punishment [Nietzsche] |
| 23527 | Moral wickedness of an offence is always relevant to the degree of punishment [Hart,HLA] |
| 1658 | In early Greece the word for punishment was also the word for vengeance [Vlastos] |
| 20617 | How should the punishment fit the crime (for stealing chickens?) [Tuckness/Wolf] |