Analysis of the Bet

Inviting the reader to explore diverse ways of thinking about the morality of capital punishment. First, foundationally the death penalty seems moral, the act of wrongdoing results in wrongdoing being done upon the actor. However, this is a very hypocritical and barbaric way of punishment for a human being. One of the main purposes of prisons was to strip criminals of their rights and keep them secluded from society, which is a serious punishment in and of itself. It is extremely unnecessary to take away a person’s life, regardless of what crime they committed.

One more conflict was man vs. self which, it took place in the mind of

The lawyer regards money as an asset by which daily life is run and how society functions. He treats money as a significant aspect of life, deserving much attention and consideration in business affairs. When a

This argument, rooted in the assumption “that people are afraid of death and will do anything to avoid it”. Due in part to its reliance on conventional wisdom, both the argument and underlying assumption appear to carry with them significant weight as it relates to penal philosophy; however, as demonstrated by numerous studies related to crime and punishment, the validity of such arguments is rested on unstable grounds.

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Capital Punishment is a moral controversy in today’s society. It is the judicial execution of criminals judged guilty of capital offenses by the state, or in other words, the death penalty. The first established death penalty laws can date back to the Eighteenth Century B.C. and the ethical debates towards this issue have existed just as long. There is a constant pro-con debate about this issue, and philosophers like Aristotle and Mill have their own take on this controversy as well. Aristotle is against capital punishment, while Mill believes it is morally permissible.

Complied during the Warring States Period, the Daodejing is widely known as one of China’s famous philosophy literature. This text reflects the general lament of a civilization that has been worn down from war and seeks to find peace by teaching people how to live by “the Way”. From a war-torn perspective, the Daodejing deems war and government corruption as evil and traces them back to greedy and power-hungry motives. As a successor to Confucius, it still carries some of his ethics. Because of its mystical overtones, it has acquired a large variety of interpretations. Its main teaching is if a person does nothing, then peace will be restored; it is the concept of non-action or 无为。When a person does not try to interfere and allows things to

Would it be true that capital punishment saves lives? Edward Koch, in his article “Death and Justice” believes it does. Koch, using common techniques to influence his audience, suggests that killers should be handled within this tried and avenged form of punishment. Koch opens his article by quoting convicted murderers Robert Lee Willie and Joseph Carl Shaw, both in the last moments of their lives pleading for the justice system to put a stop to the endless cycle of killing. Using simple logic, Koch argues that the sudden changing of the killers’ moral character is not a result of remorse for the victims, but rather an attempt to save their own lives from the killing hands of the justice system. Koch effectively uses these quotes to suggest to the reader that a killer might have thought twice about his/her own actions if the death sentence were a belief.

Throughout the history of man there has always existed a sort of rule pertaining to retribution for just and unjust acts. For the just came rewards, and for the unjust came punishments. This has been a law as old as time. One philosophy about the treatment of the unjust is most controversial in modern time and throughout our history; which is is the ethical decision of a death penalty. This controversial issue of punishment by death has been going on for centuries. It dates back to as early as 399 B.C.E., to when Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for his “corruption of the youth” and “impiety”.

Premise three, might be obvious to some but there are still people that deny the “greater brutality and violence of the death penalty when compared to” life imprisonment (Bedau, 5). In response to those in favor of the death penalty, Bedau, replies with reasons why lifetime imprisonment is less severe and invasive than execution:

In high school I read a short story called The Bet by Anton Chekhov. The story was about a young lawyer who made a bet with a banker that imprisonment for fifteen years was better than the death penalty. Like Socrates in Plato’s Crito the lawyer was trying to challenge society’s beliefs. While in confinement the lawyer read many books, whose subjects ranged from languages to philosophy. After fifteen years of solitary confinement the lawyer rejects his prize money and defaults on the bet, hours before winning. I wonder if the man had read the Crito. We can reason that Socrates’ could have inspired the man to decide to pick the more brash choice to try and teach his accusers a lesson. The man may have decided to default on the bet when he was so close to winning because he wished to make the lesson the banker learned more memorable and infinite. In the Crito even though Socrates thinks himself to be innocent of the charges brought against him he still refuses to escape prison when presented with the opportunity. This helps him teach his final lesson about the principles he believes are worth dying for. His principles are that the opinion of the many is unimportant, his life is not worth living with a corrupt soul, life is not as important as living justly, the only consideration to take into account is justice, and acting unjustly is always bad and shameful. Even though Socrates and the polis or laws arrive at the same conclusion that Socrates should not escape prison, the

Ever since the dawn of man’s search for justice, the death penalty, has been a consequence for particularly heinous crimes. Over the years society has debated whether the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. People who oppose of the death penalty view supporters as gun-slinging "rednecks" who live in the backwoods of America. Likewise, supporters view those who oppose the death penalty as uptight "suits" who live in mansions and believes that every person, no matter their crime, deserves to live. Those who oppose the death penalty argue that life in prison is a preferable solution to the death penalty. The supporters of the death penalty argue that Hammurabi’s code, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, is an

The lawyer was depicted by Chekhov as a dynamic character who once allowed greed to dominate his life, despite its obvious destructive tendency. He changed his ways as he experienced the repercussions of greed. “If you mean that seriously,” the lawyer replied, “then I bet I could stay locked up for fifteen years, not five” (960). This use of dialogue showed that the lawyer was willing to give up his youth for money because he thought it was more important. His greed resulted in the waste of his prime years in solitary confinement all for money. The author conveyed through the dialogue between the two characters that the lawyer was just as greedy as the banker; he showed this when the lawyer upped the ante as a response to the banker’s proposition. After years of being locked up all because of a wager the lawyer realized how idiotic he had been. “To show in actual practice how much I despise what you live by, I renounce the two million I once dreamed of, as though of paradise, but for which I feel only contempt now. To forfeit my right to them I shall leave this place five hours before the stipulated time and thus break the agreement” (964).Through the author’s use of characterization and through the thoughts of the lawyer the reader saw how the lawyer changed his entire

Thesis Statement: Although the rivals of the death penalty accept this to be unethical and non-gainful, promoters of the death penalty have ended up being this to be a financially savvy, and morally redress obstruction of future killings.

Deterrence has played a sizeable role in the capital punishment argument for both sides. Author of “The Ultimate Punishment”