I was thinking about this so intensely that I had the impression I'd responded, but I realized just now I hadn't yet.
What I was thinking was, I think your argument works entirely for the death penalty as a presumed deterrent: clearly, it's sacrificing people ritualistically for the sake of a desired future state (lower capital crime rates). However, insofar as there's an individual-punishment element ("you have committed a crime that's punishable by death, and so we are going to kill you"), I think it's a different thing. Societies that acknowledged what they were doing as human sacrifice in one realm (e.g. Aztecs) presumably also had ways of dealing with criminals that involved, in some cases, execution, but they made a distinction between the two sorts of killing. (I'm saying presumably, but I may be entirely wrong: I don't know anything about Aztec society beyond vague public knowledge, much of which, I realize, is likely to be wrong.)
I guess what I'm saying is, for the thing to truly be human sacrifice, I think the intention of the doer does matter. I think killing people for crime deterrence is human sacrifice, but killing them as punishment is not--so I see capital punishment as partially human sacrifice and partially not.
Otherwise, all acts of sanctioned killing become human sacrifice--and maybe we want to call them that, but if we do, then I think we're back to needing to distinguish the different flavors of them. Ogod, and now I'm thinking about all the sorts of sanctioned and awful killing there are. Ahhhh, gotta pull back a bit….
ETA: sorry to send this to you multiple times. Discovered typos -_-
no subject
What I was thinking was, I think your argument works entirely for the death penalty as a presumed deterrent: clearly, it's sacrificing people ritualistically for the sake of a desired future state (lower capital crime rates). However, insofar as there's an individual-punishment element ("you have committed a crime that's punishable by death, and so we are going to kill you"), I think it's a different thing. Societies that acknowledged what they were doing as human sacrifice in one realm (e.g. Aztecs) presumably also had ways of dealing with criminals that involved, in some cases, execution, but they made a distinction between the two sorts of killing. (I'm saying presumably, but I may be entirely wrong: I don't know anything about Aztec society beyond vague public knowledge, much of which, I realize, is likely to be wrong.)
I guess what I'm saying is, for the thing to truly be human sacrifice, I think the intention of the doer does matter. I think killing people for crime deterrence is human sacrifice, but killing them as punishment is not--so I see capital punishment as partially human sacrifice and partially not.
Otherwise, all acts of sanctioned killing become human sacrifice--and maybe we want to call them that, but if we do, then I think we're back to needing to distinguish the different flavors of them. Ogod, and now I'm thinking about all the sorts of sanctioned and awful killing there are. Ahhhh, gotta pull back a bit….
ETA: sorry to send this to you multiple times. Discovered typos -_-