Natural life sentences are among the more less-known issues that are discussed today. A Natural life sentence is a prison sentence that lasts for entire life of the inmate it was given to, with no chance of parole or any other means of freedom. Jennifer Lackey discusses this issue into great detail in her article “The irrationality of natural life sentences”. In the article, Lackey does a great job of utilizing her three rhetoric tools, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in arguing her position on the issue. The article was posted onto The Stone, on February 1st, 2016. The stone is a forum run by the New York Times whose motto is “a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless”, timely and timeless meaning
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Lackey immediately establishes ethos for her article when she describes her past in philosophy. The first four paragraphs serve as an introduction to the topic and to provide background information on Lackey’s career as a philosophy professor and her current venture of teaching philosophy to life sentence inmates at Statesville maximum security prison in Chicago. She explains how her students can get in to heated philosophical debates, ad describes them in a way that makes them not seem link the criminals and murders that were locked away. Although she acknowledges that some of the students she works with have assaulted staff members, spent decades in solitary confinement, and are murders, she also states that she feels just as comfortable at Statesville as she would teaching a class at Northwestern. In doing so, she strengthens her argument that these inmates aren’t the criminals they were when they were convicted. She also restates her point at the end of the introduction, “People can change, often in profoundly transformative …show more content…
She makes the statement “If I were given the option to heavily invest in one career for my fifteen year old daughter based on her current beliefs and values, I would decline. A lot can change in twelve years”. Here, Lackey compares giving a juvenile a natural life sentence based on the crime they committed then to choosing a lifelong career for her fifteen year old. Of course, we would think it would be illogical to choose one career that early in an adolescent’s life, and she argues that it is also illogical to give a juvenile a natural life sentence. This corresponds with her overall point of this argument which she states at the end of this portion, “Current selves and future selves can differ from on another no more that two different people
Lackey immediately establishes ethos for her article when she describes her past in philosophy. The first four paragraphs serve as an introduction to the topic and to provide background information on Lackey’s career as a philosophy professor and her current venture of teaching philosophy to life sentence inmates at Statesville maximum security prison in Chicago. She explains how her students can get in to heated philosophical debates, ad describes them in a way that makes them not seem link the criminals and murders that were locked away. Although she acknowledges that some of the students she works with have assaulted staff members, spent decades in solitary confinement, and are murders, she also states that she feels just as comfortable at Statesville as she would teaching a class at Northwestern. In doing so, she strengthens her argument that these inmates aren’t the criminals they were when they were convicted. She also restates her point at the end of the introduction, “People can change, often in profoundly transformative …show more content…
She makes the statement “If I were given the option to heavily invest in one career for my fifteen year old daughter based on her current beliefs and values, I would decline. A lot can change in twelve years”. Here, Lackey compares giving a juvenile a natural life sentence based on the crime they committed then to choosing a lifelong career for her fifteen year old. Of course, we would think it would be illogical to choose one career that early in an adolescent’s life, and she argues that it is also illogical to give a juvenile a natural life sentence. This corresponds with her overall point of this argument which she states at the end of this portion, “Current selves and future selves can differ from on another no more that two different people