What moral philosophy do you subscribe to?

An eye for an eye can be seen as justice and revenge at the same time.

'Can be seen as' isn't the same as 'is'. I've yet to see a remotely convincing argument that this is true.

I mean, it's absurd on its face. The crime is that suffering has been increased, and the 'just' solution is to increase suffering further? It's nonsense!

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Crimes have a victim and an aggressor. The aggressor is the wrong doer and must do everything he can to compensate his victim.

Physical punishment is the threat if he refuses to make amends for his wrongdoing.

That's not really an argument though, it's just stating the conclusion isn't it? Punishment as a deterrent is one thing (where it works), but punishment just because we think someone 'deserves' it is very different and I just don't see why anyone seriously thinks it is appropriate.

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It should be up to the victim. If they feel better punishing their aggressor then so be it.

the threat to exert physical punishment is required however.

There would be nothing wrong using violence to defend against aggressors or to punish people for crimes.

An aggressor has the obligation to by the very least make amends (if possible) for the wrongdoing. It is morally permissible to force them against their will to make amends for their evil aggressive actions.

kantianism

Why?



Why? Required for what?

The aggressor has violated the victim's property and so must compensate as much as possible to undo any wrong done. Of course this can't always be done.

Well maybe it doesn't have to physical but some cases could be. A murderer technically should owe his life to the victims and if he refuses to cooperate physical force is the only real alternative.

But why? One person dies so technically another one should as well?

Well forced servitude would be more productive. It is possible that the victims would prefer to kill the murderer for revenge. I doubt it though.

The murderer can barter for his life and agree to give all his money in order to keep his life.

Killing a murderer is not morally equivalent to killing an innocent person.

But you still haven't explained why the murderer deserves to take any punishment in the first place.

Also, somewhat incidentally, arguing that killing a murderer is less/more moral than killing an "innocent" person is nontrivial...

Because he has done evil against a victim. He cannot logically and consistently object to violence because his acts have violated his own beliefs.

Well he can still object to violence, either by pleading a special case for himself or his victim or by admitting it was wrong of him to commit his crime.

But even if he doesn't object to violence, it still doesn't follow that it's moral to punish him.

So you believe that lying is always morally wrong? If someone was hiding a political dissident in their house in the Soviet Union, and one of Stalin's men came to the house and asked them whether they were hiding them, would it be wrong to lie if the dissident was to be shot?

I believe we require deontological rules to control society to prevent the justifying of wrong actions- the most realistic philosophy for a well functioning and harmonious society.
However, in that scenario I'd certainly lie

kantianism

So, your morality isn't Kantian, but you prescribe Kantian rules for society.

However, your justification for both deontological societal rules, as well as your response to the thought-experiment, suggests that you subscribe to two-level utilitarianism. At the very least, you're a two-level consequentialist.

Individually, I believe that we should be utilitarians, thus we should lie in the thought-experiment. However, there are good utilitarian reasons for the state to enforce deontological rules and punish individual utilitarians (i.e. if they pushed a fat man off a bridge to save five people from being killed by a trolley car.)

So, I broadly agree.