NCJ Number
130153
Date Published
1991
Length
222 pages
Annotation
This is a historical analysis of the development of the modern philosophy of punishment with emphasis on the evolution in thinking about the retributive element that dominated classical liberal Enlightenment thought and which remains central to any discourse on criminal punishment as a manifestation of individual justice.
Abstract
The book develops the theme that the modern philosophy of punishment should be understood as a contradictory rather than a rational phenomenon. The author argues that there is a tension between the social phenomena of criminality and punishment on the one hand and their representation within the philosophy of punishment on the other hand. This tension ensures that any attempt to rationalize that philosophy will produce rationalization, i.e., an attempt to resolve the irresolvable. The book also reasons that there is a logic behind the contradictions that is rooted in history. An intellectual development is traced within the philosophy of punishment. The discussion then shows that the current impasse of the philosophy of punishment is a product of the inability of the discourse to transcend the limits of its historical context. The author concludes that justice and punishment theories based upon the ideology of juridical individualism are constantly undermined by the social character of criminality and the exercise of State power. Chapter footnotes, a 200-item bibliography, and a subject index