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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 3, 2023

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I don't think the two issues are particularly connected. There is a whole grab bag of potential reasons to be against the death penalty; false convictions, it's seemingly non-existent effectiveness as an additional deterrent, the 'sanctity of human life'. It seems that only the final one of those justifications also entails being against euthanasia

some liberating principle of self determination immediately crumble in the face of the contradiction between free will and materialism

Look, I'm hardly going to try to litigate centuries of debate over free will here, but it seems pretty clear to me that justifying euthanasia on the grounds of respecting the autonomy of the person is a legitimate perspective which is in no way contradictory with a number of legitimate criticisms of the death penalty. I don't even subscribe to the former but to rather glibly discount it as you do is pretty arrogant.

I'm hardly going to try to litigate centuries of debate over free will here

Neither am I, which is why I handwave it.

I'm sure it's possible to extract a position where one has a strong belief in free will and thinks that killing oneself through the State is moral, but it's pretty unconventional.

People who believe in individual will usually go one of two ways.

Either they believe existence is a prerequisite of morality and therefore that suicide is impermissible.

Or they believe whims/reason are beyond question because individual autonomy is paramount, and then the morally reprehensible part isn't that one is permitted to die, but that they have to rely on an institution to do it.

This is the paradox at the heart of Rousseau's idea of liberation: this nonsensical idea that the individual can be freed by dissolving his individual will into the General Will. Which taken to its logical conclusions ends in totalitarian modernisms which would say this scheme is not impermissible, but would justify it through the idea that it benefits the State rather than the individual, which does not exist under such conceptions.

Autonomy is a legitimate perspective indeed (within some moral paradigms anyhow), that's not the issue The issue is an autonomous person doesn't need the State to kill them.