Thursday, February 06, 2020

Does annihilation fit the crime?

A sequel to my prior post:


One of the primary philosophic and intuitive or gut level objections to ECT is that it seems unjust to punish people forever for temporal sins. It can be viewed as cruel or tortuous and out of proportion. In the context of punishment the common expression for this is that the punishment should fit the crime.


Does annihilation fit the crime? What are ways in which a punishment is fitting or unfitting, proportionate or disproportionate, in relation to the offense?

Here the annihilationist takes issue with the temporal disparity. According to that objection, eternal punishment is quantitatively disproportionate. I already addressed that in the prior post. 

But what about about punishment that's qualitatively fitting or unfitting? Punishment in kind. Consider the concept of poetic justice or lex talons, where the punishment is ironically akin to the offense. The perpetrator suffers the same kind of thing he inflicted or intended to inflict on his victims. 

A classic example is financial restitution for a property crime. Here the punishment corresponds to the nature of the crime. 

To take a harsher example, if a hacker makes a living by ID theft, it is fitting that he should experience ID theft. Likewise, if a mugger beats up the victim, it's fitting that he should undergo public flogging. A violent punishment for a violent crime. If an arsonist burns down someone's house with everything in it, it is fitting if he should suffer the same fate.

Here the principle is proportionality in kind as well as degree. That can be taken to an inhumane or mechanical extreme. Lex talionis is controversial in some circles, but it's intuitively popular. A straightforward concept of just desert. It's mainly frowned upon by overbred critics who've been insulted from certain kinds of harm. At a safe distance, they can afford to be disapproving.  

Compare that to everlasting oblivion. How does that have anything in common with the offense? Isn't that utterly arbitrary in relation to the nature of the wrongdoing? How does everlasting oblivion correspond to different kinds of sin? 

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