Overview
- First book to expound a new theory that provides a rational foundation for the practice of punishment
- Provides a moral defense of revenge in a way never before attempted
- Gives a concise but systematic summary of the current state of the debate
- Is written at a level that is accessible to researchers and practitioners alike, avoiding technical philosophical jargon or abstruse issues in philosophy
Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library (LAPS, volume 104)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
- Crime and Punishment
- Criminal Punishment
- Is Punishment Justified?
- Justice and Revenge
- Law and Punishment
- Punishment and Moral Philosophy
- Punishment as Crime Prevention
- Punishment, Honor, and Revenge
- Retribution and Justice
- Retributive Theory of Punishment
- Revenge as the Defense of Honor
- Revenge versus Retribution
- The Problem of Punishment
About this book
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.
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment
Authors: Whitley R.P. Kaufman
Series Title: Law and Philosophy Library
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4845-3
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-007-4844-6Published: 28 August 2012
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-017-8475-7Published: 21 September 2014
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-4845-3Published: 28 August 2012
Series ISSN: 1572-4395
Series E-ISSN: 2215-0315
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 204
Topics: Philosophy of Law, Theories of Law, Philosophy of Law, Legal History, Criminology and Criminal Justice, general