1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910438349903321

Autore

Kaufman Whitley R. P. <1963->

Titolo

Honor and revenge : a theory of punishment / / Whitley R.P. Kaufman

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Dordrecht ; ; New York, : Springer, c2013

ISBN

1-283-63418-X

9786613946638

94-007-4845-0

Edizione

[1st ed. 2013.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (208 p.)

Collana

Law and philosophy library, , 1572-4395 ; ; v. 104

Disciplina

364.601

Soggetti

Punishment in crime deterrence

Punishment - Philosophy

Retribution

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 193-199) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Chapter One: The Problem of Punishment.- Chapter Two: Punishment as Crime Prevention.- Chapter Three:  Can Retributive Punishment Be Justified? -- Chapter Four: The Mixed Theory of Punishment -- Chapter Five:  Retribution and Revenge -- Chapter Six: What Is The Purpose of Retribution? -- Chapter Seven: Making Sense of Honor.- Chapter Eight: Is Punishment Justified? -- Index.

Sommario/riassunto

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.