The Importance of Social Virtues in Human Development: The Problematic Case of Capital Punishment. Vengeance as a Virtue in St. Thomas Aquinas

For many centuries, capital punishment has been accepted as a just and lawful way to restitute the equality of justice. Nonetheless, in recent decades, many different objections have been formulated against it. In this study, I analyse a common objection, according to which capital punishment is nothing else than uncivilised “vengeance”. While referring to the “Summa Theologiae” of St. Thomas Aquinas and the texts of other Thomistic authors, such as G. E. M. Anscombe and Edward Feser, I compare contemporary opinions on this topic with the classical Thomistic approach. The paper consists of five parts. In the first part, I examine and present the aforementioned objection. I show that it ascribes to a judge or an executioner such motives as bloodlust or hatred, and stipulates that he has no concern for the good of the criminal. In the second part, I show that capital punishment is not a hateful act of “vengeance” but a proper realisation of several virtues: justice, vindicatio, and charity. I reconstruct the Thomistic approach to the analysed question by showing that for Aquinas, vengeance is a moral virtue annexed to justice. In the third part of the article, I reject the objections presented by opponents of capital punishment. I claim that capital punishment is a proper realisation of vengeance understood as a moral virtue. I also present the necessary conditions for carrying out capital punishment: (i) the criminal’s guilt, (ii) right intention, (iii) proper motive, and (iv) right object of the punishment. In the last part, I demonstrate that vindicatio is an important part of the moral character of any human being that allows the agent to properly react to any encountered injustices. Additionally, I show that carrying out capital punishment brings both joy (happiness) and sadness to an executioner, for it is simultaneously an act of justice and of charity. Finally, in the fifth part, I conclude the whole paper.