First, the fight for human dignity and respect for life, as with any struggle for human rights, is set in motion and tenaciously pursued by members of civil society, by individuals more than by states. It was a representative of the Age of Reason, Cesare Beccaria, who first advocated in 1764, in a few pages of a seminal booklet, the abolition of capital punishment.
但无论你反对死刑与否，都可以从这场辩论中汲取到两个教训。首先，争取人类尊严和对生命尊重的斗争如同任何一场人权斗争一样，受到民主社会全体成员的顽强推动，而个人为推动人权所付出的努力要远远超过国家。它所代表的是一个理性的时代，1764年切萨雷·贝卡利亚（Cesare Beccaria）在一份仅有几页的发展手册中首次提出了这样的概念，并竭力倡导废除死刑。