Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Death Penalty

334 Pages·2014·1.1 MB·English

Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Death
Penalty
Author: Elinor Gardner
Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/712
This work is posted on eScholarship@BC,
Boston College University Libraries.
Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2009
Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.
Boston College

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Department of Philosophy

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
ON THE DEATH PENALTY

A dissertation
by
SISTER ELINOR GARDNER, O.P.

submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

May 2009
© copyright by SISTER ELINOR GARDNER, O.P.
2009
BOSTON COLLEGE
ABSTRACT
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE DEATH
PENALTY
by Sister Elinor Gardner, O.P.
Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee: Father Arthur Madigan, S.J.
Department of Philosophy

Catholic moral philosophers and theologians for centuries used Thomas
Aquinas’s defense of the death penalty as a point of reference in defending the state’s
right to execute. Recent Church documents such as Evangelium Vitae, however, seem to
take a different approach to the question than Aquinas did. In secular contemporary
treatments of the death penalty, Aquinas’s account is often caricatured or simply
overlooked. One of the reasons for this is the lack of a thorough treatment of the death
penalty in the thought of Aquinas. This dissertation seeks to address that deficiency.
I present Aquinas’s account of capital punishment as an example of determining
civil punishments through the exercise of practical reason. Aquinas’s thought sanctions
neither an absolute acceptance nor an absolute rejection of the death penalty; for him, this
is not a question that admits of absolutes. Like other punishments, the death penalty is a
determination made by human reason. Its justification depends on specific historical and
cultural circumstances and on the needs of the political community, as well as on the
severity of the offense. Killing a guilty person is not intrinsically evil, in Aquinas’s view,
but it is nonetheless a last resort, when nothing else can be done for the good of the
community.
It may be that recent Church documents have avoided making use of the
Thomistic teaching on the death penalty, even where this could have made their
reasoning clearer, for fear that such arguments would be misunderstood, or in order to
make a clearer case for forgoing the penalty. If this dissertation contributes to our
understanding of what Thomas actually says about CP, it will be helpful in reconciling
the thought of John Paul II with the tradition of Catholic thought on capital punishment,
as well as in offering a reasonable way for thinking about punishments in general.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I dedicate this dissertation with gratitude and affection to
Mother Ann Marie, O.P.
and to my parents, Arthur and Michele.

I thank Father Arthur Madigan, S.J. for his careful reading of every chapter, for his
encouragement and evaluation, and for his kindness, patience, and good advice. I thank
Professor Jorge Garcia for his thoughtful and challenging comments, which I have only
begun to address. I thank Professor Patrick Byrne for his perceptive suggestions, and
Professor Thomas Hibbs for the initial idea for this dissertation, and for reading and
commenting on an earlier version. Finally, I thank Sister Mary Bernard Curran, O.P. for
her comments and corrections, and all the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia for their
unflagging love and prayers.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION V
A Background and Sources viii
B Assumptions xii
C Order of Presentation xiv
CHAPTER I: SAINT THOMAS ON PUNISHMENT 1
A Punishment is Evil in a Certain Respect 2
A.1. The Problem 3
A.2. The Nature of Evil 5
A.3. Punishment and Fault 9
B Punishment is Good Simply 13
B.1. Human Acts 14
B.2. Good and Evil in Human Acts 18
B.3. The Object of an Act of Punishment 22
B.4. Levels of Order Addressed by Punishment 32
C Remote Ends of Punishment 34
C.1. Perfect Retribution: Eternal Punishment 36
C.2. Medicinal Retribution: Temporal Punishment 39
D Conclusion 45
CHAPTER II: THE ACT AND THE INSTITUTION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS 47
A The Act of Capital Punishment 47
A.1. Central Texts: S.T. II-II, q. 64, a. 2 and S.C.G. III. c. 146 48
A.2. Objections and Replies 55
A.3. Other Acts of Killing 66
B The Institution of Capital Punishment 73
B.1. Thomas on Human Law 73
B.2. Utility, Equity, and Custom Determine Specific Punishments 84
B.3. Determining the Death Penalty 89
C Conclusion 99
CHAPTER III: THE POLITICAL COMMON GOOD ACCORDING TO ST.
THOMAS 102
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A The Political Community 103
B The Political Community as a Whole 109
C The Common Good 124
C.1. Proper Good 127
C.2. Common Good 135
D The Political Common Good 141
D.1. Happiness and the Political Common Good 141
D.2. Love of the Political Common Good 154
E Conclusion 168
CHAPTER IV: PHILOSOPHICAL OBJECTIONS TO THE THOMISTIC
ACCOUNT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 173
A First Objection: Thomas is Inconsistent in Condoning CP for Heresy 175
Response to the First Objection 177
B Second Objection: Capital Punishment is Not a Useful Punishment 181
Response to the Second Objection 182
C Third Objection: CP is a Necessary Determination of Natural Law 186
Response to the Third Objection 191
D Fourth Objection: The Human Person is not a Part 198
Response to the Fourth Objection 200
E Fifth Objection: The Political Common Good is a Merely Instrumental Good 206
Response to the Fifth Objection 207
F Sixth Objection: Intentional Killing Is Always Evil 213
Response to the Sixth Objection 218
G Conclusion 225
CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION AND APPLICATION 227
A Summary 227
B Application of the Thomistic Theory of CP to a Contemporary Case 237
C The Value of the Teaching 245
APPENDIX: THEOLOGICAL OBJECTIONS TO THE THOMISTIC ACCOUNT
OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 249
A Scriptural Objections 250
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B Recent Church Teaching on CP 258
C First Objection: There Has Been a Development of Doctrine on CP 263
Response to the First Objection 270
D Second Objection: CP is Incompatible with the Common Good as Understood in Catholic
Social Teaching 281
Response to the Second Objection 282
E Third Objection: CP Violates Human Dignity 288
Response to the Third Objection 289
F Conclusion 303
BIBLIOGRAPHY 305

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Introduction
Why turn to Thomas Aquinas for philosophical insight into the problem of capital
punishment? There are reasons to doubt the value of this approach. His account contains
elements repugnant to the contemporary reader.1 In responding to an objection that the
death penalty cannot be just because “to kill a man is evil in itself,” Thomas says that
“although it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserve his dignity, yet it may be
good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast.”2 He also frequently
compares the political community to a living body, such that “the whole of man is
directed as to his end to the whole of the community of which he is a part.”3 We will
examine both these comparisons in what follows, to see the point that each attempts to
convey. Yet we will also see that his argument does not depend on these comparisons as
a conclusion on premises. Rather, he uses them as illustrations that, ironically, are
supposed to clarify his point about punishment of the evildoer. They may indeed have
clarified the case for his contemporary readers, but the fact remains that for us they tend
not to clarify but to obscure.
Further, Aquinas’s reasoning about the death penalty is informed by the time in
which he lived: the penal law, the nature of the mediaeval political order, and the

1 His account also challenges some of our preconceptions about mediaeval political thought, as when
Thomas says of a free people that “the consent of the whole people expressed by a custom counts far more
in favor of a particular observance, that does the authority of the sovereign, who has not the power to frame
laws, except as representing the people.” S.T. I-II, q. 97, a. 3, ad 3. References to the Summa Theologiae
(S.T.) are from the translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger, 1948). Where
the translation might lead to confusion, I provide the Latin text in parentheses or footnotes. In the few cases
where I give a different translation of a word or phrase, I also give the Latin (Edizioni San Paolo, 1988).
2 S.T. II-II, q. 64, a. 2, arg. 3 and ad 3.
3 S.T. II-II, q. 65, a. 1.
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