Against the Death Penalty
Sociologist Gunnar Landtman as a Public Intellectual
Abstract
This is an article about Gunnar Landtman’s (1878–1940) role as an opponent in the public discussion on the death penalty in Finland during the 1930s. Landtman was a student of the internationally recognized scholar Edward Westermarck (1862–1939). As a Westermarckian sociologist, he studied the origins of social phenomena. He was mainly a scholar of social inequality but during the interwar period he focused his attention on criminological topics. According to him, the origin of punishment is in the instinct of revenge, which lies deeply in human nature. This instinct of revenge can be satisfied when individuals understand the common utility of laws and the common good. The death penalty would be against the common good and against the process of civilization. A society or a state was not supposed to kill its own citizens because that would weaken moral sense.During the 1930s Landtman became a well-known academic public intellectual who used sociological facts in his argumentation in the debate on the death penalty and supported universal human rights. The supporters of the death penalty claimed that it would prevent criminality because it would act as a deterrent. According to Landtman, scientific studies did not support that claim and there were not sufficient grounds for using the death penalty.
