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Death
Punishment

Why do we consider the death penalty immoral in a situation where a sadist (a very immoral person) commits heinous crimes and is sentenced to life imprisonment where he is protected from lynch mobs, given access to education, therapy (which has proved not only to be non effective in rehabilitating sadists but frees them from responsibility for their actions), medical care, food, clothing, televison, gym, etc. all at the taxpayers expense and one of his victims (a child) who has survived the trauma and torture inflicted is sentenced to a life of physical and psychological disability, in later life unable to work or pay for his ailments and who lives in constant fear that the sadist will be released and come and get him again? Is it possible that our reluctance to inflict the death penalty is out of fear but that we simply rationalize this as morality as that is the more palatable excuse. Are we just moral cowards? Wouldn't we all be relieved if the sadist suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack? And if...

Thank you for your message. I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind when you presuppose, in your first sentence, that "we" consider the death penalty immoral in the situation you describe. So far as I can tell, at least in the U.S., a good many people consider the death penalty in such a situation moral. But to continue the line of thought you begin, let's see whether it might be possible to make sense of those people who consider it immoral in that situation. 1. You're right that the sadist might get a lot of benefits at taxpayer expense. On the other hand, it's well known that at least given the current difficulty of prosecuting a death penalty case, and all the hurdles that must be got over after that, lifelong incarceration is actually less expensive than the death penalty. As a result, if your argument rests on the financial considerations, a life sentence is clearly the best option for such a person. 2. You ask whether reluctance to inflict the death penalty is out of fear,...
Death

Why are philosophers interested in the topic of death?

Thank you for your question. I'm not sure there's one reason why philosophers care about this, and I'm not in a position to exhaust all the various reasons why the topic might be of concern to them. However, here are some of the reasons of which I'm aware: 1. A long tradition dating all the way back to Plato suggests that the self survives the destruction of the body. Socrates (Plato's teacher), for instance, didn't fear his death at all, and gave as a reason for this attitude the belief that he would exist after his body ceases to be alive. That thought has cast a very long shadow, and philosophers have for a long time tried to figure out what it would be to survive the destruction of one's body. These discussions can generally be separated from questions about the existence of God, and have in recent centuries coalesced into discussions of what is known as "personal identity". One core issue for this topic is what it means for one and the same person to survive over time, even when his/her...