契约主义与死刑

Contractualism and Death Penalty

契约主义死刑观有着悠久的思想史传统——从最早的苏格拉底到近代启蒙哲学家。首先梳理历史上围绕死刑的几个主要的契约主义论证,发现古典契约论者在死刑存废问题上无法达成共识,究其根源有三:自然状态的不确定性、立约者的人格差异性和自利假设。与基于自利的契约主义不同,罗尔斯式契约主义的基础是公平的互惠合作,再加上无知之幕的设置,因此可以克服上述困难。通过运用罗尔斯式契约主义的分析方法,可以推出,无知之幕背后的立约者将理性地反对死刑。但是这种契约主义刑罚理论无法适用于非立约者的情形——即所谓的"非合作者问题"。

In the history of philosophy, many philosophers - such as Socrates and the thinkers of the Enlightenment - have discussed the ethics of death penalty by appealing to contract theory. This paper firstly summarizes several contract theory arguments about death penalty and finds that the classical contract theorists cannot reach a consensus. There are three fundamental causes of that disagreement： the uncertainty of the natural state, the diversity of the contractors＇personality, and the presupposition that the contractors are self- interest. Deffering from contractarianism, the Rawlsian contractualism is based on fair cooperation, and by the devise of the veil of ignorance it can solve the problems approach to the ethics of death penalty. The conclusion is above. This paper applies the Rawlsian analytical that the contractors behind the veil of ignorance will rationally oppose death penalty. However, this contractual punish theory cannont be applied to the non - contractors, and that can be called ＂the non - cooperator problem＂.