Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment

von Whitley R.P. Kaufman

204 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

This book addresses the problem of justifying the institution of criminal punishment.   It examines the “paradox of retribution”: the fact that we cannot seem to reject the intuition that punishment is morally required, and yet we cannot (even after two thousand years of philosophical debate) find a morally legitimate basis for inflicting harm on wrongdoers.  The book comes at a time when a new “abolitionist” movement has arisen, a movement that argues that we should give up the search for justification and accept that punishment is morally unjustifiable and should be discontinued immediately.  This book, however, proposes a new approach to the retributive theory of punishment, arguing that it should be understood in its traditional formulation that has been long forgotten or dismissed: that punishment is essentially a defense of the honor of the victim.  Properly understood, this can give us the possibility of a legitimate moral justification for the institution of punishment.

• Reihe: Law and Philosophy Library
• Themen: Recht Rechtswissenschaft, allgemein Rechtsmethodik, Rechtstheorie und Rechtsphilosophie
• ISBN: 9789401784757
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 21.09.2014
• Größe: 23.5 x 15.5 cm
• Verlag: Springer Netherland