(611) "I am far from indulging in flabby pity..."
(612) "Society is not taking revenge; it merely wants to forestall."
(613) He goes into why society does not believe in the exemplary affect of capital punishment
--> executions are no longer public.
(614) "It takes a terrifying spectacle to hold the people in check." (Tuant de la Bouverie)
(614-15) There is a connection to theme of Kafka's penal colony; admiration and obsession regarding their contraptions.
(616) "...the transparence belongs to life, but their fixity belongs to death."
(617) "...crude surgery..."
(618) "The man who enjoys his coffee while reading that justice has been done would spit it out at the least detail."
(619) "Indeed, one must kill publicly or confess that one does not feel authorized to kill. If society justifies the death penalty by the necessity of example, it must justify itself by making publicity necessary." -> refer to the earlier quote from Gambatta.
(621) "But law is always simpler than nature. When law ventures, in the hope of dominating, into the dark regions of consciousness, it has little chance of being able to simplify the complexity it wants to codify."
(622) "...the instinct for self-preservation is matched, in variable proportions, by the instinct for destruction."
(629) "But not knowing whether or not you are going to live, that's terror and anguish."
(630) "The animal that is going to be killed must be in the best condition."
(630-31) Hemlock; for the Greeks, it gave them a choice - death or suicide.
(631) "We must read between the lines that the condemned made no noise, accepted his status as parcel, and that everyone is grateful for this."
(642) "There is a solidarity of all men in error and aberration."
(649) "Society indeed has lost all contact with the sacred."
(650) "Those who cause the most blood to flow are the same ones who believe they have right, logic, and history on their side."
1) Capital punishment has no exemplary value.
- the reasoning behind the exemplary argument is faulty. As Camus points out, most people who kill did not plan it or knew whether they were going to do it before shaving in the morning.
2) The condemned is something different from bare life; keeping one fit for death.
- killing and the sacrifice: anthropological implications and culture?
