[kimmk]

Romans very rarely practiced ritual human sacrifice (outside of gladiator games). The specific case of burying two Gauls and a Greek alive was an exception done by consulting the Sibylline books, a collection of prophetic instructions only to be used during extreme crisis like after the battle of Cannae during the second Punic War.

[5DFractalTetris]

Disagree completely. Capital punishment has always been little more than ritual sacrifice. War itself may be little more than ritual sacrifice.

[ggm]

Contextually conflating capital punishment with ritual is I think wrong.

[jack9]

It's fundamentally a philosophical question. I think it's a surprisingly insightful observation.

[beaconstudios]

I disagree. What god is capital punishment meant to appease? It's supposedly there for people who are too dangerous to keep alive right? Human sacrifice seems to me like it was meant to bring better harvests or otherwise give the illusion of controlling a chaotic/random natural process.

[pasabagi]

I don't think so. I think it's current justification is typically framed in the form of 'punishment', and its historical justification was purely religious. And, coincidentally, was at least partially about giving the punished person a fair shot at redemption by punishing them while they were still on earth - which is literal god-appeasement.

Regardless, I think equating capital punishment with ritual sacrifice is a fair judgement. No matter how rational our rituals and systems for killing people seem, there's no reason to suggest that the Aztecs did not feel similarly about their rituals and systems. Law is not supposed to be a science, so it's also not free from cultural relativism, even if you're not a cultural relativist generally.

[5DFractalTetris]

I consider all distinguishing characteristics between people or groups of people to be projections utilized by human minds to motivate and bring forth highly-ritualized purifying violence, which ranges in intensity from inconsequential name-calling to full-scale genocide. My best historical example of this from pre-modernity was the 13th Century Cathar Purge, where the War refrain "Kill them all and let God sort them out" originates, and continues forth until this day. Records point to a similar practice within the Aztec regime, with self-sacrifice a common action to sustain the empire.

Given the advanced bureaucratic practices common to empires in precolonial America, it seems the Aztecs simply required regular sacrificial deaths (via suicide or homicide) to maintain their office, in addition to regularly liquifying prisoners or the enslaved. Like a death camp which ran on self-motivated suicide, for reasons of cosmic accounting.

[sonnyblarney]

"What god is capital punishment meant to appease?"

I have to agree just a shade with the premise.

A lot of punishment is morally oriented, and it's derived from our value system which is headed by 'God', or at least an interpretation of that.

Murderers are executed not just to keep them off the streets, but as a matter of punishment which is fundamentally pleasing to our moral code ... headed by God.

I think old-school capital punishment is at least distantly related to the concept of sacrifice.

Though I wouldn't want to equate the two.

[int_19h]

"Civic religion" is a concept that some people subscribe to. It doesn't have gods per se, but it has abstract concepts (like e.g. justice) that can be similarly worshiped.

[lostlogin]

Framed like that, there are a mass of specific issues that spring to mind. Not that they shall be spoken of however...

[beaconstudios]

Isn't that just polytheism?

[patrickg_zill]

One is to appease "the gods". The other is to protect society (and punish the evil) {as they saw it}. Quite different.

[citrablue]

How are they different? (I don't mean this sarcastically)

In one world, we believe that a crime committed causes harm against a social construction. In the other...

To me, it seems like the crucial difference is whether the person responsible for the act is the one punished. It is not clear that is the objective of the modern (American) justice system. It is even less certain that was an issue with pre-Enlightenment justice systems.

Human nature seems to be more "someone has to pay!!" more than "the person responsible has to pay!"

[jack9]

> One is to appease "the gods". The other is to protect society

Defining 2 things then calling the definition different is not compelling.

The thinking that makes them less different is that they both serve "a greater good" (a just society or secular society) or "specific good" (of a community or divine favor). How you perceive the original intent or what terms you use are not relevant to the association.

[dsfyu404ed]

When the state structure is considered to be the status quo endorsed by the gods is capital punishment not a ritual sacrifice?

[citrablue]

Not sure why this was downvoted, but I support your question.

As modernists, we believe that it's important to punish the person who is responsible for a crime. It is not clear that is

1/ "Justice",

2/ shared by our ancestors,

3/ any more clear or moral than other belief systems.

It boils down to the purpose of the modern justice system. I've heard all the following reasons, each with deficiencies:

1) because doing wrong must be met with punishment (tautology)

2) because it keeps dangerous people off the street (not structurally optimized for)

3) because it makes our society safer (abstract/generic)

4) because it makes it clear that each individual is responsible for their actions (most believable to me)

I guess my question is this: why do we put people in jail (or kill them)? Personally, I don't think our justice system exists to make "good society" safer[0]; I think it's to control people so they behave in the same way those in charge want people to behave. (I.e., the initial motivation is amoral.)

[0] if so, victimless crimes wouldn't be so heavily regulated

[5DFractalTetris]

Perhaps divine retribution is a better explanation than ritual sacrifice in theocratic regimes, in the case that a god or a group of gods require the death of the mortal body so the soul can face metaphysical justice for Earthly sin.

However, regardless of the metaphysical beliefs of a state, any entity of sufficient size & organization will often be recognized by an individual as possibly having godlike power over the individual's body. Whether or not that truth actually ritualizes state-sanctioned violence, or the diffused psychological impact of that violence can be called a sacrifice, is a matter of opinion; however, being that it is state-sanctioned it is obviously distinct from murder, and because these punishments often have no deterrent effect on the populace, their true nature is in camera obscura.

[flatline]

Perhaps in a modern context. I know that the ancient Chinese were big into sacrificing prisoners and captives of war. And the end result is eerily similar even when couched in terms of law and order. Sacrifice has both been used to appease or ask favor of the gods, and to assert ones rightness and an other’s wrongness. Capital punishment fits the second criterion to a tee.

[projectramo]

The big difference between human sacrifice and capital punishment is that the person sacrificed hasn’t done anything “wrong.”

The big difference between war and human sacrifice is that the target of human sacrifice is not a threat or a random bystander.

[yters]

Based on this premise 56 million abortions a year is also ritual sacrifice, on a greater scale than any form of human sacrifice in the past.