The Apache First Nations saw capital punishment as the ultimate means of restoring harmony with their community. Generally the Apaches would the method of short term exile to punish a transgressor. And believed that the offender just needed to have his conscious and the conscious of their family/friends cleansed. Only for the most grievous and serious of crimes, were capital punishment used as a means for this cleansing. What is interesting is how the Apaches viewed the goal of capital punishment. It was used to restored equilibrium within the community and not exact penance or retribution. "An eye for an eye" did not necessarily make whole a community -- such a view of justice would seem to damage the community further.
The French Revolutionaries were very different.... They used the death penalty to rip out the roots of a decaying society and put in place a society that would be exemplified by liberty and brotherhood. Madame La Guillotine became an blood-thirsty symbol of this quest for a new society. The revolutionaries believed that only through chaos and bloodshed, could the ideals of a new society be achieved. In May of 1972, extreme acts of violence were committed by Parisian insurrectionists when they killed hundred of accused counter-revolutionists. Following this act, the Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National Convention, which then abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the establishment of the French Republic. On January 21, 1793 it sent King Louis XVI to meet Madame La Guillotine along with his wife Marie-Antoinette just nine months later. It was said that there were thousands of victims of the guillotine and the pursuit of justice and a new society resulted in a reign of terror.
The two culture groups, the Apache and the French Revolutionaries, are very different in regards to how they viewed " justice" within their societies. For the Apaches, justice was the restoration of equilibrium to the community. Meanwhile the French revolution used the death penalty to "execute" the old order. It is interesting how the declaration to abolish feudalism was considered "the death certificate of the old order". The Apaches' goals was to maintain the harmony of their community and restore it to its state previous to the crime committed. However, the French wanted to blow up their society completely and used capital punishment as a means to rid the old society in preparation of the new one. You can clearly see how capital punishment and justice are multi-faceted concepts and are shaped by a cultural groups' visions of an ideal society. And so fundamentally the challenge that still remains is whether or not capital punishment is an appropriate means of achieving justice?
Work Cited:
Knaus, William, Wagner Douglas, Draper
Lynch, Mona. "Capital Punishment as moral imperative", Punishment & Society. California: Sage Publications, 2002. 213-236. Print
Martel, Joane. "Remorse and the production of truth", Punishment & Society.
Stone, Bailey. Reinterpreting
the French Revolution. Cambridge : Cambridge University
No comments:
Post a Comment