Reflections on the Guillotine

About “Reflections on the Guillotine”

"Reflections on the Guillotine" is an essay written by Albert Camus in 1957. In it, Camus strongly supports the abolition of the death penalty. His position aligns with that of Cesare Beccaria and the Marquis de Sade, who also criticized state-sanctioned killing. Camus does not argue from sympathy for the condemned but from logic and statistical evidence. He believes capital punishment is a convenient choice for governments when real reform and solutions could be pursued instead. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)