Camus opposed the death penalty absolutely while Beauvoir endorsed it to honor the Resistance

Evidence

Here, Beauvoir and Sartre found themselves again disagreeing with Camus. After an initial hesitancy, Camus came out firmly against the death penalty. Cold, judicial killing by the state was always wrong, he said, however serious the offence. Before the trial in early 1945 of Robert Brasillach, the former editor of a fascist magazine, Camus signed a petition calling for mercy in case of a guilty verdict. Sartre was not involved, as he was away at the time, but Beauvoir pointedly refused to sign the petition, saying that from now on it was necessary to make tough decisions in order to honour those who had died resisting the Nazis, as well as to ensure a fresh start for the future. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 522

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ‘On Sacrifice’ themes of state violence and to the broader postwar alignment of Camus vs Sartre that runs through existentialist histories.
• SEED: Angle: how the same moral principle (honoring the dead) justified opposite postures on vengeance — Beauvoir executing collaborators ‘for’ the martyrs, Camus refusing.