Overview

One in the series New Dialogues in Philosophy, edited by the author himself, Dale Jacquette presents a fictional dialogue over a three-day period on the ethical complexities of capital punishment. Jacquette moves his readers from outlining basic issues in matters of life and death, to questions of justice and compassion, with a concluding dialogue on the conditional and unconditional right to life. Jacquette's characters talk plainly and thoughtfully about the death penalty, and readers are left to determine for themselves how best to think about the morality of putting people to death.

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9780742561441

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Reviews

Books discussing the death penalty now flood the bookstalls. Most, of course, are devoted to criticizing it; few come to its defense. With one or two exceptions virtually none attempts to explore both sides. Dale Jacquette's contribution is all the more admirable for doing just that-and doing it carefully, fairly, and boldly. -- Hugo Adam Bedau, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Tufts University A promising new series that offers noteable contemporary philosophers the opportunity to write books in a neglected format that has proven historically to be remarkably fruitful. -- Steven M. Cahn Dialogues on the Ethics of Capital Punishment is a provocative and compelling revival of that oldest tradition in Western philosophy-the dialogue. Dale Jacquette's dialogue performs a lively and rigorous debate on the death penalty; the form itself allowing tension and counter-tension to develop a nuanced analysis of torture, punishment, justice, war, rule of law and violence. This philosophical tete-a-tete cleverly illustrates how to construct and defend an impregnable philosophical position, and powerfully asserts the centrality of philosophy to contemporary issues in public policy. -- Vittorio Bufacchi, author of Violence and Social Justice

Books discussing the death penalty now flood the bookstalls. Most, of course, are devoted to criticizing it; few come to its defense. With one or two exceptions virtually none attempts to explore both sides. Dale Jacquette's contribution is all the more admirable for doing just that-and doing it carefully, fairly, and boldly.--Hugo Adam Bedau

Author Information

Dale Jacquette is Senior Professorial Chair in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Jacquette has held the Fulbright Distinguished Lecture Chair at the University of Venice, Italy and is the author and editor of over twenty books on philosophy in diverse areas of mind, language, logic, mathematics, ethics, and for the introductory student of philosophy as well.

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