It was only with the Enlightenment that forceful arguments against the death penalty began to appear. One argument was that the state’s mandate to exercise violence may not breach the sacred zone of human life. Another was that the deterrent effect of capital punishment can be achieved with surer and less brutal penalties.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 210