Abstract
Few social problems today seem to cause as much dissension among people as the problem of punishment. As various crime rates soar in countries around the world such as the United States, in some of the republics of the former Soviet Union, Brazil, Colombia, and the United Kingdom, just to name a few countries, reports of increasingly violent crimes have become commonplace. What should be done in order to solve the problems associated with crime? A comprehensive answer to this question is not offered in this book. For such an answer would not only involve providing answers to an array of sociological and psychological questions about human behavior and motivation, and how to counter balance the myriad of motives concerning why criminals commit wrongful deeds, but it would entail a plausible theory of how we ought to act, and why, so that crimes can be effectively minimized. These and other queries concerning the solution to the problem of crime are beyond the scope of this book. This book is concerned with the problem of punishment, and it makes no presumptions as to how the problems of crime ought to be solved.’ Since crime is a fact of life in every society, this project takes on the task of analyzing philosophically the nature and justification of punishment. For if the problem of crime itself cannot be solved, the least we owe ourselves is a proper understanding of how best to respond to some crimes, and plausible reasons why punishment is either justified or obligatory.
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Of course, there is a sense in which punishment may to some extent and in some cases deter crime, thereby serving as a partial solution to the crime problem. However, I construe punishment as more of the state’s response to crime, rather than as a preventative solution to it.
John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” originally published in The Philosophical Review, 64 (1955), pp. 313. Pagination for purposes of this book is found in John Rawls, Collected Papers, Samuel Freeman, Editor ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 ), pp. 20–46.
Stanley Benn, “An Approach to the Problems of Punishment,” Philosophy, 33 (1958), pp. 325–41.
H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968 ), Chapter 1.
Jeffrie G. Murphy, “Does Kant Have a Theory of Punishment?” Columbia Law Review, 87 (1987), pp. 51011.
Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981 ), pp. 366–8.
For a discussion of this point, see Roy Brooks, Editor, When Sorry is Not Enough (New York: New York University Press, 1999 ), Parts 6–7; Randall Robinson, The Debt ( New York: Dutton, 2000 ).
John Rawls, The Law of Peoples ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999 ).
Perhaps it is arguable that the very placing of the basics of moral responsibility theory, a genre of philosophical-ethical literature which has been grounded in metaphysical concerns about human freedom and unfreedom, into the context of collective moral and legal responsibility theories is itself a contribution to moral responsibility theory in general. If so, I gladly accept my making this contribution both here and elsewhere. However, my claim is simply that I do not intend to make a contribution to (individual) moral responsibility theory at the level of specific argumentation and analysis.
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Corlett, J.A. (2001). Introduction. In: Responsibility and Punishment. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9851-4_1
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