Capital Punishment and the Collective Nature of an Individual Human Action

Abstract

Abstract Capital Punishment is based on the philosophy of eliminating the wrongdoer to prevent him from re-engaging in an aggravated or other offences. It is also seen as deterrent and retributive in nature. The modern theories of criminal justice have shifted towards the reformative approaches since retribution-based penalty of death is not only primitive, brute and inhuman but also has little or no deterrent social implications. This study, however, proposes the reasoning that the individual human mind is essentially collective in nature and, therefore, it is the society as a collective which intends and acts through the instrument of an individual human body. The individual behaviour is shaped by one’s society, including the forces of Nature (in the form of Samskaras or mental impressions of ancestors, whose psyches were in turn shaped collectively by their extended society and so on) and the forces of Nurture. The reasoning finds support in certain distinguished psychological studies in the West esp. the idea of the Collective Unconscious of Carl Gustav Jung, several sociological writings, and the psychological argumentation in the Indian philosophical traditions. This research is based on secondary sources including review of existing literature, scholarly and juristic works. The purpose is to argue that the body is an instrumentality of an action and, therefore, must not be eliminated for the volitions of the mind, which pilots the body and is in itself an accumulation of external impressions or Samskaras.