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Retributive Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Gertrude Ezorsky
Gertrude Ezorsky*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y.
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Extract

Retributivists who proclaim our moral obligation to punish criminals have displayed, on their own behalf, a type of argumant which I shall call Moral Balance. There are three versions of Moral Balance. According to Moral Balance I, retaliatory punishment restores the equality disturbed by the criminal. Moral Balance II philosophers admire the proportion between morality and welfare which punishment can yield. Those who hold with Moral Balance Ill are fascinated by the equilibrium of social benefits and burdens set by punishment. All three versions are flawed as follows: they imply that crime is morally justified.

Moral Balance 1: Equality

Hegel informs us that:

his (the criminal's action) is the action of a rational being and this implies that it is something universal and that by doing it the criminal has laid down a law which he has explicitly recognized in his action and under which in consequence he should be brought as under his right.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , March 1972 , pp. 365 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Section 100, p. 70. Translated by Knox, T. M. (Oxford University Press, 1942).Google Scholar

2 Hegel's, Theory of Right, Duties and Religion, trans. Burt, B. C. (Inland Press, Ann Arbor, 1892).Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Critique of Practical Reason, Part I, Book I. Chapter 2.

5 Morris, Herbert “Persons and Punishment”. The Monist, October, 1968.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Ibid.