Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment (Law and Philosophy Library Book 104)

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.​ Front Matter....Pages i-vii The Problem of Punishment....Pages 1-18 Punishment as Crime Prevention....Pages 19-45 Can Retributive Punishment Be Justified?....Pages 47-72 The Mixed Theory of Punishment....Pages 73-92 Retribution and Revenge....Pages 93-112 What Is the Purpose of Retribution?....Pages 113-146 Making Sense of Honor....Pages 147-166 Is Punishment Justified?....Pages 167-191 Back Matter....Pages 193-203