Marco,
i took Pirsig's words to be anti-death penalty, which seemed very obvious to
me, but, as ive learned from previous posts, what's obvious to me is not
always obvious to others. the reason some of us found the moq's position on
the death penalty a little confusing was because of this passage:
When a society is not itself threatened, as in the execution of individual
criminals, the issue becomes more complex. In the case of treason or
insurrection or war a criminal's threat to society can be very real. But if
an established social structure is not threatened by a criminal, then an
evolutionary morality would argue that there is no moral justification for
killing him. (Lila, chap 13, p 185).
Pirsig seems to imply in the second sentence that there is in fact the
possibility of a moral execution. this person would have to be a threat to
society, imprisonment not being enough to prevent him from continuing to
threaten society. that's why it can conjure up images of the joker and
magneto and the stan lee-esque super villains as moral execution subjects.
rasheed
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